One Planet News: Bat evolution and funding
How bats evolved plus funding available
by Annette J Beveridge
The evolution of birds has enabled them to fill many ecological niches but for bats, it is different.
Cornell University researchers have found that, unlike birds, the evolution of bats' wings and legs are tightly coupled, and it is this that prevents them from filling various ecological niches.
Legs and wings provide different functions.
Researchers had thought previously that the origin of flight for vertebrates required forelimbs and hindlimbs to evolve independently, enabling them to adapt to distinct tasks more readily.
This instigated the need to test the idea because bats and birds do not share a common flying ancestor.
Andrew Orkney, a postdoctoral researcher at the Hedrick Laboratory at Cornell University said: “We initially expected to confirm that bat evolution is similar to that of birds, and that their wings and legs evolve independently of one another. The fact we found the opposite was greatly surprising."
Researchers observed in both bats and birds that bone shape within a wing - handwing, radius, humerus, or within a leg - the femur and tibia, are correlated which means limb bones evolve together.
Bats forelimbs and hindlimbs, unlike birds, did not evolve independently. When the shape of a wing changes, either increasing or decreasing in size, the same happens to the leg shape.
Following their discovery, the team began re-examining the evolution of bird skeletons in greater depth.
Orkney said: "While we showed that the evolution of birds' wings and legs is independent, and it appears this is an important explanation for their evolutionary success, we still don't know why birds are able to do this or when it began to occur in their evolutionary history.”
Research was first published in Nature Ecology and Evolution.
Photo credit: Credit: Jason Koski/Cornell University
Bats and funding
Records over hundreds of years have shown that bats have always made use of churches but the numbers of bats in these buildings has increased in recent years.
With serious degradation of habitat or the loss of woodlands or agricultural buildings, churches may be the the most stable feature in some landscapes.
According to the Bats in Churches project, approximately 55% of all Anglican churches across England have bats. The numbers increase for pre-Victorian churches.
Funding
Funding is available for places of worship in England.
The funding should be spent on small scale solutions helping to manage bats and enabling people to use the building with seasonal professional cleans and specialist heritage repairs of bat damaged items.
A grant of up to £1000 is available but the project must be completed within 12 months.
To achieve the grant, the place of worship must create a positive community engagement activity. Wildlife engagement activities help connect people to nature on their doorstep and encourage the community to interact with their local place of worship where they may not have done so before.
More information here:
-