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    Bat Island: A Rare Journey into the Hidden World of Tropical Bats
    Bat Island: A Rare Journey into the Hidden World of Tropical Bats
    Bat Island: A Rare Journey into the Hidden World of Tropical Bats
    Ebook236 pages1 hour

    Bat Island: A Rare Journey into the Hidden World of Tropical Bats

    By Christian Ziegler, Rachel A. Page, Dina K. N. Dechmann and

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    About this ebook

    Featuring incredible photography and insight from an international team with long-term ties to the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Bat Island spotlights the unique beauty and environmental importance of the seventy-six species of bats on Panama’s Barro Colorado Island.

    For decades, scientists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute have studied the remarkable biodiversity of bats on Barro Colorado Island in Panama, where an astonishing seventy-six species coexist. Now, for the first time, Smithsonian scientists’ expertise pairs with the stunning photography of National Geographic contributor Christian Ziegler for a captivating visual journey into the fascinating world of these elusive night creatures.

    Bats are unique among mammals: they have acquired true flight, provide essential ecosystem services, and represent the ecologically most diverse group of mammals worldwide. Synthesizing decades-worth of intensive study, Drs. Rachel Page, Dina Dechmann, Teague O’Mara, and Marco Tschapka provide authoritative insight alongside 150 photographs that showcase bats’ extraordinary environmental adaptations and rich natural history.

    OVER 150 STUNNING PHOTOGRAPHS: National Geographic photographer and contributor Christian Ziegler has captured over a decade’s worth of images of the myriad of bat species living on Barro Colorado Island that capture these elusive animals in a variety of settings, from night shots of flight through the tropical rainforest to closeups of their remarkable wings and feeding patterns.

    WRITTEN BY SMITHSONIAN SCIENTISTS: All chapters of Bat Island are written by scientists long affiliated with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, one of the world’s leading tropical research organizations that spans a century. Topics include bats’ diverse sensory abilities, foraging strategies, roosting ecologies, and social systems.

    DECADES OF CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH: Bat Island, published in partnership with the Smithsonian, presents fascinating insights from scientists working at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, which boasts decades of study of the hyperdiverse bat population on Barro Colorado Island in addition to the most comprehensive and long-term datasets on tropical bats.

    CALL FOR CONSERVATION: Drs. Page, Dechmann, O’Mara, and Tschapka highlight how bats are threatened by habit fragmentation and land degradation, and communicate the initiatives needed to ensure the survival of these animals, which are critical to maintaining healthy, balanced ecosystems.

    RARE BEAUTY: Award-winning photojournalist Christian Ziegler’s photography illuminates the unique beauty and allure of bats and the tropical rainforest in Panama.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherEarth Aware Editions
    Release dateNov 21, 2023
    ISBN9798887620404
    Bat Island: A Rare Journey into the Hidden World of Tropical Bats
    Author

    Christian Ziegler

    Christian Ziegler (www.christianziegler.photography) is a German photojournalist specializing in natural history and science, with a focus on tropical ecosystems. Ziegler currently works for the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Konstanz, Germany, and is a regular contributor to National Geographic. His work has been awarded numerous prizes in the competitions for Wildlife Photographer of the Year, European Wildlife Photographer of the Year, and the North American Nature Photography Association. A tropical ecologist by training, Ziegler has been associated with STRI for over twenty-five years since he started his own graduate research on Barro Colorado Island. He has since worked in tropical rainforests on four continents. Ziegler’s aim is to highlight species and ecosystems under threat and to share their beauty and importance with the world. Ziegler splits his time between his homes on the edge of a rainforest national park in central Panama and in southern Germany, from where he starts his adventures around the world.

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      Book preview

      Bat Island - Christian Ziegler

      Bat Island: A Rare Journey into the Hidden World of Tropical Bats, Photography by Christian Ziegler, Rachel A. Page • Dina K.N. Dechmann • M. Teague O’Mara • Marco Tschapka. Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.Bat Island: A Rare Journey into the Hidden World of Tropical Bats, Photography by Christian Ziegler, Rachel Page • Dina K.N. Dechmann • M. Teague O’Mara • Marco Tschapka. Earth Aware. Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.

      We dedicate this work to the extraordinary legacy of Elisabeth Kalko. In Eli’s honor, the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute has created a memorial fellowship to support the next generation of Neotropical bat researchers. Proceeds from this book go directly to this fund.

      INTRODUCTION

      Years ago, bat researcher Elisabeth Eli Kalko and nature photographer Christian Ziegler put their heads together and hatched the idea for a book about tropical bats. Eli and her students had been studying bats in Panama for decades, often accompanied by Christian. They felt it was time to synthesize the unique wealth of knowledge about tropical bats and show the world how diverse and fascinating bats are through Christian’s pictures. However, Eli’s bright flame burned far too quickly, and in 2011 she passed away unexpectedly during a field trip to Kilimanjaro at the age of forty-nine. Her legacy continues to this day. Panama continues to be a hot spot for bat researchers, many of them her former students, and Christian still documents their work with his breathtaking pictures. And so, many years later, we—Drs. Rachel A. Page, Dina K.N. Dechmann, M. Teague O’Mara, and Marco Tschapka—have come together to fulfill Eli’s dream and finally invite the world to see the bats of Panama through Christian’s lens.

      Smithsonian Staff Scientist Elisabeth Eli Kalko recording bat echolocation calls from a tower high above the rainforest canopy in Panama. Eli was a pioneer of tropical bat research, and her legacy continues to this day.

      Bats are extraordinary. With over 1,450 species, they are a highly successful group that make up over 20 percent of all mammal species. They are more ecologically diverse than any other group of mammals, feeding on the broadest range of diets and inhabiting an extensive variety of niches, which they access using a fascinating array of sensory modalities. Even though the order of rodents is higher in species richness, bats surpass rodents in their stunning ecological diversity and their impressive adaptations in morphology (anatomical form and structure), physiology, and behavior. They are also the only mammals to have acquired true powered flight. The key adaptations of bats—flight and echolocation—have allowed for extraordinary evolution and rapid diversification of species. Bats occur almost everywhere on Earth except in extreme deserts, high mountaintops, small oceanic islands, and polar regions. Their species richness is highest in the tropics, where over a hundred species can coexist in a single location.

      Because of their large collective biomass and diverse feeding habits, which include plants (fruit, nectar, and occasionally leaves and bark), a wide variety of animal prey (from tiny insects to small vertebrates), and even blood, bats provide critical ecosystem services. The vast majority of bat species are voracious predators of insects and are critically important for the control of insect pests, saving farmers an estimated 23 billion dollars in pesticide use each year in the United States alone. Bats with vegetarian diets are essential for the reproduction of many plants, as they move seeds and pollen over larger distances than most other animals—making them the secret gardeners of many landscapes. Without bats, the regeneration of tropical forests would be severely delayed, or in some cases impossible. Through their interactions with a wide range of other organisms, bats are essential in their contribution to the long-term maintenance of diversity.

      Bats are fascinating, but studying them is difficult. Most species are very small, highly mobile, and active at night. Bats are thus one of the most poorly understood groups of animals. However, rapid technological advances have revolutionized bat studies in recent years. Innovative new tools including miniaturized tracking technology, thermal cameras, and ultrasound recording equipment have enabled us to study bats in unprecedented detail. One island in the Panama Canal has played, and continues to play, an important role in the groundbreaking studies of tropical bats: Barro Colorado Island. This book is about the bats of Barro Colorado Island and how their in-depth study has changed our general understanding of this extraordinary group of animals.

      This book is timely, as bats are increasingly under threat. While many animal species are at risk due to habitat loss and climate change, bats are uniquely vulnerable. On the one hand, they are traditionally perceived as negative in many cultures. On the other, in today’s era of emerging diseases, bats are frequently targeted as culprits—often incorrectly, but sometimes correctly, based on solid scientific evidence. To date, there is no conclusive support for direct transmission of SARS-CoV2 from bats to humans. Since the outbreak of Covid-19, however, many studies have focused on the links between human encroachment on wildlife habitat and increased risk of pathogen spillover. Two of the most famous and conclusive cases of spillover from bats to livestock and to humans illustrate this link. The first, in Southeast Asia, is the Nipah virus that was transmitted through the body fluids of bats roosting in trees to young pigs kept in pens under those trees; the virus then spread to humans as the pigs were sold and transported across the region. The second is the Marburg virus, which was transmitted to Ugandan mine workers through seasonal surges of virus loads from bats in the natural cave system where the bats were roosting. In both cases, spillover could have been avoided through proper understanding of bat biology and behavior. Fear of disease has led to active persecution of bats all over the world.

      A tree illustrating the evolutionary relationships of the seventy-six bat species from eight taxonomic families found on Barro Colorado Island, Panama. The bat species illustrated are (clockwise from the top): Pallas’s mastiff bat (Molossus molossus), black myotis (Myotis nigricans), Mexican funnel-eared bat (Natalus stramineus), greater sac-winged bat (Saccopteryx bilineata), greater bulldog bat (Noctilio leporinus), Spix’s disk-winged bat (Thyroptera tricolor), big naked-backed bat (Pteronotus gymnonotus), and white-throated round-eared bat (Lophostoma silvicolum). Illustration © Javier Lázaro.

      There is a long history of bat research in Europe and North America, but the study of tropical bats is relatively recent. The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) was one of the first institutions to study tropical bats in detail, and this research initially took place almost exclusively on Barro Colorado Island (BCI). The island now harbors one of the best-studied rainforests in the world. The seventy-six bat species of BCI form one of the best-studied communities of bats in the tropics, and maybe even worldwide. BCI is an amazing natural laboratory, where for a century unique datasets have been gathered that provide crucial insights into the composition, dynamics, and functioning of this species-rich tropical ecosystem. In the following pages, we will look at the many discoveries made on BCI and in Panama over the past decades, place them into a broader context, and highlight impressive technological advances that have opened doors in the study of bats.

      This book is a homage to the bats of BCI as seen through the superb photographs of Christian Ziegler, a nature photographer who learned his craft in the forests of BCI. Each of Christian’s images is accompanied by brief text that addresses the deceptively simple, yet fundamental, question: How can so many species coexist in such a small place? This book explores the different adaptations and strategies that each bat species has used to find its place in the richly structured tropical

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