The significance of sleep and factors that affect it have been well documented, however, in light of global climate change the effect of temperature on sleep patterns has only recently gained attention. Unlike many mammals, bats (order: Chiroptera) are nocturnal and little is known about their sleep and the effects of ambient temperature (Ta) on their sleep. Consequently we investigated seasona...

INTRODUCTION Bats are one of the most important reservoirs and vectors of the rabies virus in the world. METHODS From 1988 to 2003, the Zoonosis Control Center in São Paulo City performed rabies diagnosis on 5,670 bats by direct immunofluorescent test and mouse inoculation test. Blood samples were collected from 1,618 bats and the sera were analyzed using the rapid fluorescent focus inhibitio...

Vegetation clutter is a limiting factor for bats that forage near ground level, and may determine the distribution of species and guilds. However, many studies that evaluated the effects of vegetation clutter on bats have used qualitative descriptions rather than direct measurements of vegetation density. Moreover, few studies have evaluated the effect of vegetation clutter on a regional scale....

The unique combination of flight and echolocation has opened the nocturnal air space as a rich ecological niche for bats. By analysing echoes of their sonar emissions, bats discriminate and recognize three-dimensional (3-D) objects. However, in contrast to vision, the 3-D information that can be gained by ensonifying an object from only one observation angle is sparse. To date, it is unclear ho...

149 Bats (order Chiroptera, suborders Megachiroptera (»flying foxes«) and Microchiroptera) are abundant, diverse, and have been found on all continents except Antarctica. Although bats provide us with certain resources and many feed on insects, many populations of bats are at risk, threatened or endangered. The characteristics of these mammals include particular diets, colonial or solitary natu...

Echolocating bats emit trains of intense ultrasonic biosonar pulses and listen to weaker echoes returning from objects in their environment. Identification and categorization of echoes are crucial for orientation and prey capture. Bats are social animals and often fly in groups in which they are exposed to their own emissions and to those from other bats, as well as to echoes from multiple surr...

Echolocating bats use active sensing as they emit sounds and listen to the returning echoes to probe their environment for navigation, obstacle avoidance and pursuit of prey. The sensing behavior of bats includes the planning of 3D spatial trajectory paths, which are guided by echo information. In this study, we examined the relationship between active sonar sampling and flight motor output as ...

Rather than hibernate during the cold Canadian winter, hoary bats prefer to undertake an impressive migration to their wintering grounds in Southern USA and Mexico before returning home to Canada during the spring. These bats are not the only winged animals to undertake such mammoth journeys, with many birds also migrating similar distances to escape harsh winters. However, as Liam McGuire from...

The eastern bent-winged bat (Miniopterus fuliginosus) is an insectivorous bat that lives in the caves, throughout Japan [11]. The bats aggregate in cave in populations of tens to thousands of individuals. We examined the mitochondrial D-loop sequences of bats in Wakayama, Japan, and divided them into 35 haplotypes. The sequences of 3 haplotypes in Wakayama were the same as those of 10 Miniopter...

The epidemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) was caused by a newly emerged coronavirus (SARS-CoV). Bats of several species in southern People's Republic of China harbor SARS-like CoVs and may be reservoir hosts for them. To determine whether bats in North America also harbor coronaviruses, we used reverse transcription-PCR to detect coronavirus RNA in bats. We found coronavirus RNA ...