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The night skies are filled with over 1200 species of bats, which comprise twenty-two percent of all living mammals, and have a total population in the billions. Our lives and theirs are intimately linkedin ecological systems in which they are key pollinators, and in human health, as vectors of disease. Their abilities to echolocate have inspired incredible biotechnology. And yet there is no up to date book that conveys an ecological and economic significance of bats, which is as vast as their incredible wingspans.
This book is a tour of what is currently known about the biology of bats. It answers questions about where bats live; what they eat; why some bats hibernate and others migrate; why some live alone and others form large roosting aggregations, sometimes numbering in the millions; whether bats have their evolutionary roots with primates or some other mammalian group; how flight has influenced bat mating behavior; how bats use different sensory systems, from olfaction to hearing, to detect and capture prey; how and when bats reproduce and care for their young; what diseases they carry; why bats get bad press; and what we can do to protect and preserve these amazing mammals for future generations to benefit from and enjoy. The authors have studied bats the world over, from the petrified forests of Arizona to the rainforests of French Guiana, from Mayan ruins in Belize to the Hell Creek Badlands of Montana, from Tobago to Thailand. There are no better guides to echolocate generalists and specialists alike through the wonders of the bat world."
A propos de l'auteur
Melville Brock Fenton is professor in and chair of the Department of Biology at the University of Western Ontario. He is the author or editor of several books, including
Bat Ecology, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
Nancy B. Simmons is curator-in-charge of the Department of Mammalogy at the American Museum of Natural History, where she is also professor in the Richard Gilder Graduate School.
Résumé
There are more than 1,300 species of bats - or almost a quarter of the world's mammal species. But before you shrink in fear from these furry "creatures of the night," consider the bat's fundamental role in our ecosystem. A single brown bat can eat several thousand insects in a night. This book presents these nocturnal creatures in a new light.
