Flying foxes to wilt with climate change, by ABC Science Online's Stephen Pincock, contends that new research shows some of Australia's flying foxes face a grave threat from extreme temperatures expected to become more frequent with climate change.
Dr Nicola Markus, an Australian expert on their ecology and co-author of this new research, says, "It bodes extremely badly for the black flying foxes."
In early 2002, she and an international team of researchers witnessed the deaths of more than 1,300 grey-headed and black flying foxes at Dallis Park in northern New South Wales (most of them females and their dependent young).
"On that day, what we saw was, very simply, that the flying foxes died of heat stress," Dr Markus said. The temperatures, which exceeded 42 degrees Celsius, killed more than 1,300 of the animals. State-wide, more than 3,500 flying foxes fell to the soaring temperatures in that single heatwave.
Flying foxes are keystone species for forest environments. They have also been central to a taxonomic debate, which asks, are they really primates?
In 1986, Dr. John D. Pettigrew published his findings that all flying fox species (examined) shared the half-dozen brain pathways that were otherwise unique to primates. Under a microscope, their brain affinities with lemurs were difficult to tell apart.
Megabats and microbats had been historically grouped together because of the obvious similarities of their handwings. However, Dr. Pettigrew observed that the differences between to two groups included such things as diet, dentition, chromosomes, world geographic distribution, sperm, biochemistry, parasitology and numerous features of behavior. He also hypothesised that the two groups evolved flight separately, with the mega-chiroptera in the Tertiary era and the micro-chiroptera, much earlier, in the Cretaceous.
>In which case, get used to it, you are an associate of criminal scum and by your deeds shall we know you.
That my friend is defamatory. Care to back your defamatory comments in a court of law?
"The use of Camphor fruit by bats is a fact, not an anecdote"
Where is this referenced Ian? And you want to talk about "hard evidence"? You have been asked to match the work of the researchers and have failed, preferring instead to insult and tell us your life story.
"And Libby, the fact that recent heat waves did not kill all of any colony is sufficient evidence to conclude that the mortality was limited to the least healthy. Unless you can confirm that some were drinking beer to keep cool, it is self evident."
Samples taken showed that animals of no apparent ill-health died, so your typical simplistic view of the world does not hold. The only thing that is self-evident is that you have no idea what you are talking about and yet continue to slag off those who genuinely do.
Really, Paul. The inability of the map makers to distinguish between Lantana and rainforest is a fact, not an anecdote. The increase in area of Camphor Laurel is well documented. The use of Camphor fruit by bats is a fact, not an anecdote, as is their use of orchard fruit etc.
But of course, you are just sidestepping the question, aren't you, Paul. You don't have any hard evidence of significant recent landscape scale habitat destruction in NE NSW because;
a. you didn't show any and
b. there is none, is there?
And your use of vague terms to imply a meaning that cannot be substantiated is sleazy. The constant references to clearing of the Big Scrub as if it was done recently, when it actually took place more than a century ago, is pure bullShit. And the deliberate avoidance of any official mention of the scale and extent of forest regeneration onto past (mostly cumpulsorily)cleared land is uncontestable proof of a corrupt scientific and policy millieu.
And the clown has the gall to demand that I "find the references" to official misconduct and fraudulent science? By your responses, Paul, you obviously work in a related field. In which case, get used to it, you are an associate of criminal scum and by your deeds shall we know you.
And Libby, the fact that recent heat waves did not kill all of any colony is sufficient evidence to conclude that the mortality was limited to the least healthy. Unless you can confirm that some were drinking beer to keep cool, it is self evident.
>sleazy
>pure bull$hit.
>corrupt
Use of these derogatory phrases doesn't add sophistication to your debate of your unsubstantiated anectdotal opinions about flying foxes, land clearing et, etc.
You're entitled to your fanciful unreferenced opinions of course. However you seem to vey much focused on your backyard and are threatened by knowledge built on by research.
Find the references to back the claims you make, do the research.
At the moment you are just blowing wind out your....., which is typical of right paranoia and conspiracy theorists
There was an extremely hot, dry day in Sydney 2 years ago which also killed off a large number of bats in a local camp. Bats of all age classes and apparent health died.
One is also tempted to wonder if the real reason the FF were dropping off was because their concentrated faeces had killed off the roost tree and thereby removed all shade from the departed leaves. This is often the case and the mortality from lack of shade in a normal heat wave is just nature's way of telling them it is time to shift camp (due to their fouling of the nest).
Note, the original reports made no reference to whether the heat wave constituted a new extreme under global warming or just another heat wave of the type that takes place often.
And one must also conclude, as for human mortality in heat waves, that it is the vulnerable that drop off. But once the vulnerable have died in the first heat wave, then mortality in subsequent additional heat waves is unlikely to be the same. Ergo, increased frequency of extreme heat events will not impact on the healthy part of the population.
The conclusion: Bats die in heat waves, as they, and many other species, have done for millenia. But the carion eaters do very well. And summer passes, and life goes on, as it has done for millenia.
Well,
Since the planet is about to bake to death, a generous short-term solution would be to move these bats to the Antarctic.
That place is about to become a temperate zone, any day now.
Hi Libby,
The flying squirrels in Finland and Estonia are called the Siberian flying squirrels
There are flying squirrel gliders here Ann, but they are marsupials, not rodents. I've seen a flying squirrel in Indonesia. They also occur in the US, but I wasn't aware they were in Finland and Estonia.