With Over 100 Bat Species
Can You Find One To Admire?

Malaysia's Bat Species: A Global Center Of Diversity Under Threat

By Rick Gregory

In the world of bat species, Malaysia stands supreme. No other country can boast of such high diversity of these flying mammals with, undeservedly, bad reputations.

The nation is blessed with bats. But what do we really know about them?

For starters, bats pollinate forest and fruit trees and eat loads of insects. Bats live in caves, only a few species, but most roost in rainforests, banana and palm leaves, bamboo stands, tree hollows and roofs of temples and other buildings. Bats are also sophisticated creatures.

Remember the number 1111. It’s the total number of known bat species worldwide.

Malaysia counts 118 bats; that accounts for over 10% of global bat fauna. That makes Malaysia not only a centre of bat diversity in the Old World; it also designates the country as critical for international bat conservation.

A staggering 40% of the country's mammals are bats, including half of all rainforest mammals.

Though we know very little about the ecology and reproduction of bats, we do know that many bat species are under threat. More than one-quarter of Malaysia’s bats is “red-listed” on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) records. This means 34 bat species are at varying levels of extinction risk in the near future.

Sometimes we need to take stock of our own actions by taking stock of what is in the wild before it disappears. The Malaysian Bat Conservation Research Unit (MBCRU) is attempting to do that and more.

Launched at the 12th International Bat Research Conference in 2001, the MBCRU is a collective effort of scientists, students, wildlife and education professionals and volunteers. According to its directors, Prof. Dr. Zubaid of the National University of Malaysia (UKM) and Dr. Tigga Kingston of Texas Tech University, its aim is to promote research and conservation education of the country’s fascinating bat fauna.

Bats are basically divided into two main groups – the big, fruit-eating ones and the smaller, insect-eating ones. Fruit bats, like the flying fox, usually have puppy dog eyes, extended snouts, weigh up to 1.5 kg, roost in trees and caves and feed only on nectar, pollen, flowers and assorted fruits.

Insect bats are normally much smaller, weighing only a few hundred grams, with beads for eyes and odd looking nose parts that resemble a rosette of pressed petals. They eat insects, tonnes of insects.

All bats can see. Fruit bats rely on sight to get around, but insect bats also deploy an impressive sonar technique to detect the things in their environment.

So far we have not mentioned anything about blood-sucking vampire bats. That’s because Malaysia doesn’t have any. Nor does Thailand, or Indonesia, or the Philippines. If you plan a trip to South America, then you can start worrying about the three species known to take blood samples from humans.

In Malaysia, leeches cause more red-stained messes than bats ever will.

Hunting for food and sport, together with deforestation and habitat loss, have taken a toll on bat species populations, especially flying foxes. Large fruit bats hanging from exposed tree canopies are easy targets for indiscriminate shooters and food supplies for indigenous peoples.

The Wildlife Conservation Society reported that a transect survey at a satellite roosting site found over 1,500 cartridges in just two weeks. The hunting pressure on flying foxes in Sarawak was particularly heavy until the government issued a ban on the commercial trade of wild meat and restricted the number of shotgun cartridges each person could fire per month.

Over the years, development projects cleared forests and disturbed traditional roosting sites to reduce bat habitats. A 1999 survey of historical records and interviews with ground personnel by UKM observed that 40% of the sites known to have bats in Peninsular Malaysia are gone.

This is quite a devastating discovery when considering biological diversity. “Malaysia has the most species richness in any locality,” explains Dr. Kingston. “It’s where diversity peaks.”

Malaysia is a world record holder. In the Krau Wildlife Reserve there are more insect bat species per square kilometre than anywhere else on earth. Fifty-three bat species were recorded within a three kilometre square zone of primary jungle.

Two other insect bats were found in another part of the reserve. Add the eleven species of known fruit bats to the total and the overall diversity reaches sixty-six bat species. Probably one of the most prolific concentrations of mammalian wildlife ever witnessed at one site.

It will come as no surprise then that the MBCRU sets up camp within the 53,000 hectares of primary rainforest that distinguishes Krau as one of the world’s premier wildlife research sites.

According to Dr. Kingston, Krau is vital for several reasons. It allows her team to conduct research in undisturbed primary lowland forest (less than 300 meters in elevation), without influences from major rivers or open patches near the study site. It also presents a unique opportunity to study bats on a large scale with intense sampling methods.

The dozens of bat species in Krau coexist because they adapt to different habitats and utilize the forest layers. Insect bats separate into three distinct habitat types – open-space, gap and edge, and forest interior.

Two characteristics – manoeuvrability and agility - define the flying behaviour of bats and explain variations in their wing design.

Open-space bats are efficient flyers with long narrow wings attached to big bodies. They excel as fast agile gliders that forage in crop fields, clearings and high above the forest canopy. They don’t navigate well enough to hunt in dense habitats. To detect prey, these bats emit highly intense and long lasting sound waves that echo back to signal certain items.

Open-space bats are also hard to catch in nets, so sound is used instead. An acoustic catalogue of bat calls allows researchers to identify individual species in a similar way that birdwatchers capture birdsongs. “There is no baseline data for these bats,” says Tony Wood, a PhD. candidate in the UK. “So we need a good selection of calls from each bat species encountered to build up our call library.”

Gap and edge bats seek out perimeters, openings and water avenues that dissect forests to forage. They stay away from the wall of tree trunks inside the forest because of their limited flight movements. However, they sometimes roost in the jungle and researchers put up fine-meshed mist nets and stringed harp traps across rivers and streams to collect these bats.

Forest interior bats are the most acrobatic. The thick matting of vines, tree stems and broad leaves requires an exceptionable ability to weave your way through the small spaces in the jungle. With broad wings and light bodies, forest bats flutter amid the green clutter to feed. They send out short range echo signals that enable them to distinguish between insects and plants.

The key elements of the MBCRU programme center on research on bat diversity, skills development and environmental education. The main focus is on forest dwelling bats, a diverse but vulnerable rainforest group.

“The main thrust of our research is to identify the bat species most at risk from habitat disturbance,” says Tigga Kingston. “We need to develop a predictive framework so that conservation efforts can be implemented before populations decline.”

The research team, a collection of university professionals and graduate students from Malaysia, Indonesia, United Kingdom and the United States, has captured, measured and released over 7,000 bats.

Bats do not live long lives. The average is seven to eight years. The longest on record is 38 years. Bats also do not reproduce in great numbers either; only one pup per year.

All of this work is just the first phase to collect data for profiling individual bat species. It provides a slow, methodical snapshot of the forest landscape to assess variations in bat communities in good habitat. Eventually these species risk profiles will determine which bats are more likely to succumb to habitat changes.

Then these risk profiles will be tested against actual bat diversity found in fragmented or disturbed habitats. It is a crucial step. Because if risk profiling is successful, then that means some bat species will not adapt and die out.

And without these dedicated studies to save biodiversity, Malaysia may one day be infamous for its bat extinction rates instead of its bat diversity.

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