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Why Conserve Fruit & Nectar Bats?

Fruit and nectar feeding bats play a pivotal role in the ecology of the rain forests where they live, sharing the role of seed dispersal and pollination with birds and insects. Old world fruit bats eat the fruit, nectar or flowers of more than 300 plant species from 59 families, and these plants rely on the bats for seed dispersal and pollination (Fujita & Tuttle, 1991). Bats disperse seeds far away from the parent tree by either swallowing them and depositing the seeds in their droppings or carrying off the fruit to eat it. In fact, fruit bats are the primary means of seed dispersal for many tropical plant species. Bats are particularly important in oceanic islands where they are often the only flying animals big enough to transport larger seeds. Fruit bats have been shown to be the sole pollinator and seed disperser of the silk cotton tree (Ceiba pentandra) on the island of Samoa in the south Pacific (Elmqvist et al., 1992). Nectar feeding bats are important pollinators of many wild as well as important agricultural plants like durian, mangoes, cashew, figs, balsa, dates, kapok and others. Some plants, described as 'chiropterophilous' by Elmqvist et al., (1992), produce flowers that appear to be especially designed to be pollinated by fruit bats. Some fruits have an unusual smell, like the infamous durian of south east Asia, which is repellent to humans but appealing to fruit bats, and may have evolved for that reason (Pierson & Rainey, 1992). On Pemba Island in the Indian ocean it was found that seeds that had first passed through the digestive system of the Pemba fruit bat Pteropus voeltzkowi had a much higher chance of germinating than if they were taken straight from the ripe fruit. It may be that the bats selectively eat fruit containing more viable seeds, and that the seeds in fruits that simply fall to the ground are damaged by parasites or fungus, which reduces their viability (Entwistle & Corp, 1997b).

It is estimated that more than 134 plants that yield products used by humans are entirely or partially reliant upon bats for seed dispersal or pollination (Fujita & Tuttle, 1991). Thus, any threat to the world's fruit bats must be viewed with an appreciation of the wider reaching consequences their disappearance would have. If the fruit bats go the ecosystem will suffer as a result and this will be felt at every level, including fruit agriculture, which has a highly significant role in the economies of tropical countries.

Information on this page was compiled and authored by Oliver Thatcher and is currently being updated.

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