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From: pamela@bu-bio.bu.edu (Pamela Hall)
Newsgroups: sci.bio,talk.environment
Subject: Re: Bats by a Mile
Message-ID: <82025@bu.edu>
Date: 20 May 91 18:45:37 GMT
References: <1991May17.044756.26698@ddsw1.MCS.COM>
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Reply-To: pamela@bu-bio.UUCP (Pamela Hall)
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In article <1991May17.044756.26698@ddsw1.MCS.COM> arf@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Jack Schmidling) writes:
> 
> The above of course, only applies to insectivorous bats.  Many fruit eating 
> bats have no echo-location capabilities at all.
> 
> arf
> 
> 

Just thought you might like to know that most species of bats are not
insectivorous, most are fruit, flower and/or nectar eaters.  Temperate
bat species are almost all (I not sure if it is truly all species) are
insectivorous while many more tropical species are non-insectivorous and
as most species of bat are tropical, I think this puts insectivorous
bats as a minority.  Also vision is well developed in old world fruit
bats (members of the Megachiroptera?), but the other order
(Microchiroptera) are largely, though not exclusively, echolocating
species. I also believe that this order has many more species than the
Megachiroptera. In the neotropics, Microchiroptera dominate, (maybe even
being the only order of bats in the neotropics?), while in the old world
tropics both Microchiroptera and Megachiroptera exist.  At some point in
the not too distant past (maybe 2-3 years ago, in Science) researchers
concluded that the Megachiroptera species were actually more closely
related to Primates than to Microchiropteran bats!  How about that, true
flying primates!!!

I hope I haven't just told you something you are much better informed
about than I!

Pamela Hall