Carving Out a Home

Several species of tropical bats build their own roosts by creating “tents” out of leaves. And recent studies find that other roost-making bats also build homes out of such plant parts as stems, roots and even clusters of fruit. Now, new research has discovered yet another roost-making strategy: a fruit bat in Malaysia that carves its home out of the active nests of ants and termites in various trees.

The research by Robert Hodgkison of the University of Aberdeen in Scotland was supported by a scholarship from Bat Conservation International. He found that the spotted-winged fruit bat (Balionycteris maculata), one of the smallest of the Old World fruit bats at less than half an ounce (13.5 grams), creates smooth, bell-shaped cavities in the nests. The roosts are large enough to hold one male and up to nine females with their young.

The construction technique has not been confirmed, but it's likely that spotted-winged fruit bat males use their teeth and jaws to hollow out the soft interior chambers of the insects' tree-mounted nests. We also find similar roost cavities within the root masses of epiphytic plants (non-parasitic species that grow on the surface of other plants). Spotted-winged fruit bat roosts have been confirmed among the roots of birds' nest ferns and wild ginger.

Hodgkison collaborated on this project with Sharon Balding of the University of Aberdeen, Tom Kunz of Boston University and Zubaid Akbar of the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia.

To help support this kind of important research by contributing to the Bat Conservation International Scholarship Fund, please contact Nicole Daspit or (512) 327-9721.

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