Bats of Southern and Central Africa. Ara Monadjem

      Figure 8. (a) A harp trap set in a path through forest understory, near Sakeji School, northwest Zambia. (b) Detail of the three banks of nylon lines that intercept flying bats. This design was modified from that of Tidemann and Woodside (1978) (© F. P. D. Cotterill).

      Figure 9. Harp trap set over a side channel of the Limpopo River (© F. P. D. Cotterill).

      Figure 10. (a) Macronet (30 × 6 m) awaiting nocturnal fieldwork (Chivi District, southern Zimbabwe). The modified 8 m yacht masts are held erect by guy ropes. (b) Detail of the net links and pulley system that facilitates rapid access to netted bats (© F. P. D. Cotterill).

      The following European and North American museums hold significant collections from Africa (including its southern and central regions): the American Museum of Natural History (New York, AMNH), the California Academy of Sciences Natural History Museum (San Francisco, CalaCAD), the Carnegie Museum of Natural History (Pittsburgh, CMNH), the Field Museum of Natural History (Chicago, FMNH), the Harrison Zoological Museum (Sevenoaks, HZM), the Los Angeles County Museum (LACM), the Museum Alexander Koenig (Bonn, ZFMK), the Museum of Comparative Zoology (Harvard, MCZ), the von Humboldt Museum of Natural History (Berlin, MNKB), the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle (Paris, MNHN), the Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto, ROM), the Royal Museum of Central Africa (Tervuren, RMCA), the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (Washington D.C., USNM), the Natural History Museum of the University of Kansas (Lawrence, NHMKU), the State Museum of Natural History (Stuttgart, SMNS), and the Natural History Museum, South Kensington (London, BMNH), which also includes the Natural History Museum (NHMUK). A full list of museums and their acronyms is provided in the List of Specimens.

      Despite this heritage of information gathered over two centuries of collecting, our knowledge of the basic aspects of biology of the majority of bat species, not least their distributions, remains very poor. The magnitude of this deficiency is quantified across the pages of this book. There are just too few collectors and scientists relative to the high diversity of bats occurring in our region. This makes contributions by enlightened and observant amateur bat workers all the more valuable. Significantly, six out of the seven southern African records of two rare species, Tadarida lobata and T. ventralis, constitute specimens found dead by the public and submitted to the museum in Harare, Zimbabwe, or more recently in the Soutpansberg and Waterberg Mountains of the Limpopo Province (Taylor et al. 2015, P. J. Taylor, unpublished data). Scotoecus albofuscus was recorded for the first time in South Africa when two amateur bat workers responded to distress calls by a pregnant female bat (the bat later gave birth to twins and died in the bat workers’ care). Additional specimens of this rare bat have been located in the Durban region by bat rehabilitators. The first South African records of the rare Scotophilus alvenslebeni were discovered in bat houses manufactured by a local bat enthusiast, Nigel Fernsby.

      The rapid rate of habitat change across large regions of southern Africa, under burgeoning human demands for natural resources (Figure 33), magnifies the significance of the deficiencies in our knowledge. It underpins arguments to improve our knowledge of bats and indeed all biodiversity.

Figure 11. This map shows the distribution of the 6,000 museum specimen records used to create the maps in this book. Red dots mark specimens that have been personally checked by at least one of the authors.

DATABASES AND AUTHORS’ CONTRIBUTIONS

      This revised edition perpetuates the complementary areas of expertise of the contributing authors. These extend across behaviour (notably sonar and flight, MCS), biogeography (AM, FWC, PJT, MCS), ecology (AM, FWC, MCS, PJT), natural history, systematics and taxonomy (AM, FWC, PJT), and reproductive biology (FWC). Taxonomic revisions and biogeography continue to form the core of this work. These data are founded in the many years we have spent checking and working out identifications of museum specimens from Africa that are preserved in natural history collections worldwide. We visited collections as follows (where shared, we tended to focus on different chiropteran families):

      Ara Monadjem: DM, KM, IICA, SMM, TM, BMNH, MNHN, SAM ZM, KM, MMK, NMB, ZMFK.

      Peter Taylor: BMNH, DM, HZM, MNHN, MNKB, RMCA, SMM, TM.

      Fenton Cotterill: AMNH, BMNH, CAS, CUMZ, FMNH, HZM, KM, LACM, MCZ, NMZB, ROM, RMCA, TM.

      Our work in collections centred on compiling computer databases, which were merged for mapping. We have also carried out numerous bat surveys since the 1980s, focusing on complementary regions of Africa.

BAT BIOLOGY

      This section gives an introduction to the biology of bats. The behaviour of individual species is discussed in the species accounts section. More detailed information, beyond this overview, can be obtained in the specialised and comprehensive literature, including Adams and Pedersen (2000, 2013), Kunz (1982, 1988), Kunz and Racey (1998) and Kunz and Fenton (2003). The illustrated syntheses of Hill and Smith (1984), Richarz and Limbrunner (1993), Altringham (1996), Neuweiler (2000) and Fenton and Simmons (2015) are readable, and they compile valuable information about the natural history of the Chiroptera.

      Since 2010, when the first edition of our book appeared, the comprehensive six-volume Mammals of Africa has been published. The entire fourth volume is dedicated to bats and shrews (Happold and Happold 2013). Compiled by 25 authors, this is the most comprehensive synthesis of information on African bat ecology and general biology. The even more sumptuous Handbook of the Mammals of the World (Wilson and Reeder 2009–2019) comes in nine lavishly illustrated volumes that began with the carnivores in 2009. The ninth volume is entirely devoted to bats, and was published in late 2019.

OVERVIEW

      As the only mammals capable of sustained flight, bats have evolved to exploit the nocturnal aerosphere. Their adaptive radiation into a diversity of ecological and behavioural niches includes adaptations to shelter in an impressive variety of daytime roosts. The unique and rich diversity of bats is also constrained tightly by the physiological limits placed on body size by flight. These factors are represented in the behaviour, reproduction and ecology of over 1,400 living species of the order Chiroptera. Dependence on sonar for nocturnal navigation and locating prey is an equally important determinant of the natural history of these fascinating mammals (Hill and Smith 1984, Fenton and Simmons 2015). The emerging synthesis in the concepts and methods of aeroecology (Kunz et al. 2008) recognises the keystone roles of bats as the apex frugivores, pollinators and predators in the aerosphere (Chilson et al. 2017, Frick et al. 2013).

MIGRATION

      In temperate (and some subtropical) regions, cold winters force bats to migrate or hibernate. A few species migrate over longer distances (> 500 km), while many make short, local (< 50 km) or medium distance (< 500 km) movements between winter and summer roosts (Fleming and Eby 2003). In southern Africa, the seasonal appearances and disappearances of Eidolon helvum likely reflect responses of these bats to changing food supplies (Richter and Cumming 2008).

      In Gauteng, Limpopo and the Western Cape (South Africa), Miniopterus natalensis migrates up to 260 km (van der Merwe 1973a, 1975) between warmer maternity caves where females give birth in summer (e.g. the De Hoop