The evolution and diversity of bats
Abstract Bats are currently placed in a single order, the Chiroptera. They are divided into two sub orders, the Mega- and Microchiroptera, commonly referred to as the megabats and micro bats. The megabats are the Old World fruit bats: large (for bats, 20-1500 g), exclusively plant-eating (i.e. they...
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| Format: | Book Part |
| Language: | unknown |
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Oxford University PressOxford
1996
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| Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198540755.003.0002 https://academic.oup.com/book/chapter-pdf/52527548/isbn-9780198540755-book-part-2.pdf |
| Summary: | Abstract Bats are currently placed in a single order, the Chiroptera. They are divided into two sub orders, the Mega- and Microchiroptera, commonly referred to as the megabats and micro bats. The megabats are the Old World fruit bats: large (for bats, 20-1500 g), exclusively plant-eating (i.e. they eat fruit, flowers, nectar, and pollen), and confined to Africa, tropical Asia, and Inda-Australasia. There are about 175 living species, all belonging to one family, the Pteropodidae. Microbats on the other hand are found on every continent except Antarctica, and on many isolated islands. They are, as their name implies, generally smaller than megabats (1.5-150 g), and they eat all sorts of things, as we’ll discover later, although the ancestral microbat almost certainly ate insects and other arthropods. The approximately 790 species are distributed among 17 families. Figure 1.1 will fulfil our immediate needs as we look at the origins of bats, and the source of this diversity. It shows the known fossil bats in relation to a simplified evolutionary tree of extant bats. |
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