Fruit bats emerge as unlikely allies in the Atlantic Forest restoration

Résumé détaillé

Bats have long occupied a sinister place in Western pop culture. Ever since Bram Stoker published Dracula in 1897, these nocturnal mammals have been associated with vampires.…

Bats have long occupied a sinister place in Western pop culture. Ever since Bram Stoker published Dracula in 1897, these nocturnal mammals have been associated with vampires. Outside fiction, however, only three of the world’s roughly 1,500 known bat species feed on blood — and only one targets mammals such as cattle and other livestock. Even then, humans are rarely on the menu.

Bats represent the second most diverse group of mammals, behind rodents. They also provide essential ecosystem services, including insect pest control, pollination and seed dispersal; around a third of all species feed on fruit or nectar.

A fruit-eating bat won over Lays Cherobim Parolin early in her career. As she was about to graduate with a degree in biology, the scientist wanted to work with larger mammals but ended up joining a bat research project instead. The first time she held one, as she removed it from a mist net, she was hooked.

“People have no idea that bats are seed dispersers and have the potential to restore [natural] areas. They never remember them, they only remember birds,” Parolin, now a professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná (PUC), said.

The encounter left such an impression that Parolin got a tattoo on her arm of the great fruit-eating bat (Artibeus lituratus), a species identifiable by two pale stripes across its head. The tattoo serves as a personal keepsake, but it also reflects a decades-long shift in ecological thinking: Bats can play a decisive role when a forest needs to start over.

Data from Embrapa Forestry show that frugivorous bats disperse seeds from more than 140 plant species in the Atlantic Forest, depositing between 600 and 25,930 seeds per hectare each day even in degraded areas. They feed on fruit in forests, cross agricultural areas for several kilometers and disperse seeds while flying — unlike most birds, which disperse seeds only when they land.

For more than 20 years, researchers have investigated how to harness that natural behavior…

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