Lactation in vespertilionid bats
Abstract Lactating pipistrelle bats (Pipistrellus pipistrellus) feed one, occasionally two, young from two thoracic mammary glands for about four weeks. Throughout lactation, suckling is interrupted each night as the bats forage for food, sometimes over considerable distances. The energetic costs of...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Book Part |
| Language: | unknown |
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Oxford University PressOxford
1995
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198549451.003.0009 https://academic.oup.com/book/chapter-pdf/52526945/isbn-9780198549451-book-part-9.pdf |
| Summary: | Abstract Lactating pipistrelle bats (Pipistrellus pipistrellus) feed one, occasionally two, young from two thoracic mammary glands for about four weeks. Throughout lactation, suckling is interrupted each night as the bats forage for food, sometimes over considerable distances. The energetic costs of milk secretion and aerial foraging are considerable and, particularly at times of food shortage, are accommodated by a reduction in body temperature and torpor in the lactating animal. The mammary gland is also subject to this fall in temperature, so that milk secretion is likely to undergo pronounced diurnal variation, a situation similar to that in rodents, where it is dependent on the daily feeding pattern. Milk secretion is tailored to the intermittent suckling pattern by local regulatory mechanisms within the mammary gland, which respond to the frequency or completeness of milk removal. This mechanism is shared by other species but appears to be a predominant influence in bat mammary tissue, so much so that the developmental changes it induces obscure those changes usually associated with stage of lactation. |
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