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Do Fruit Bats Deserve to Be Listed As Vermin in the Indian Wildlife

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Do Fruit Bats Deserve to Be Listed As Vermin in the Indian Wildlife Do fruit bats deserve to be listed as vermin in the Indian Wildlife (Protection) & Amended Acts? A critical review N atarajan S ingaravelan,Ganapathy M arimuthu and P aul A. Racey Abstract Of the 13 species of fruit bats occurring in India, Introduction the Indian flying fox Pteropus giganteus, the dog-faced fruit bat Rousettus leschenaultii and the greater short-nosed fruit ats (Chiroptera) are the second largest order of mam- 1 116 2005 bat Cynopterus sphinx are distributed throughout the coun- Bmals, with . , species (Simmons, ). Among them 183 try. They usually live in trees (P. giganteus), temples and c. belong to the family Pteropodidae and are essentially caves (R. leschenaultii) and foliage (C. sphinx) and feed on vegetarian, eating fruit, pollen, nectar and leaves, and the fruits such as fig Ficus spp., Singapore cherry Muntingia remainder have more varied diets that include frugivory, calabura, Indian almond Terminalia catappa, mango Man- although most are insectivores. But within the Old World, gifera indica, guava Psidium guajava as well as leaves, nectar including India, only pteropodids eat fruit, consuming a and pollen. The other 10 species live at sea level and at wide variety of commercial and non-commercial species 1985 altitudes of . 2,000 m and their distribution and foraging (Marshall, ). They play a pivotal role as pollinators and activities may be restricted mainly to forests. Two of them, seed dispersers of many plants and in tropical forest succes- 1976 1993 the Nicobar flying fox Pteropus faunulus and Salim Ali’s sion (Start & Marshall, ; Fleming & Estrada, ; 1994 1998 fruit bat Latidens salimalii are endemic. Although details of Fleming & Sosa, ; Banack, ; Muscarella & Fleming, 2007 300 200 their foraging activity are poorly known, there is no evi- ). At least plant species of nearly genera rely dence that they visit commercial fruit orchards. They feed mainly on Old World fruit bats for their propagation 1983 1985 1991 on wild fruits and disperse seeds widely, contributing to (Marshall, , ; Fujita & Tuttle, ). Furthermore, 500 forest regeneration. Although P. giganteus, R. leschenaultii these plants produce c. economically valuable products and C. sphinx feed on commercial fruits, their role in including fruits, dyes, tannins, timber, medicines, fibres and 1991 pollination and seed dispersal of economically important fuelwood (Fujita & Tuttle, ). The importance of bats for plants such as kapok Ceiba pentandra, mahua Bassia the future availability of these products is substantial and has latifolia and petai Parkia spp. is important. Sacrificial crops been seriously underestimated. such as M. calabura can be used at orchards to reduce the damage bats cause to commercial fruit. Because the ecolog- Bats as pollinators and seed-dispersers ical services provided by bats are not appreciated by the Fruit bats are mobile foragers (Fleming & Sosa, 1994), public and conservation planners, all fruit bat species with moving genetic material in the form of pollen between one exception are still categorized as vermin and included isolated fragments of vegetation and depositing seeds over as such in Schedule V of the Indian Wildlife (Protection) large areas (Young et al., 1996; Law & Lean, 1999). They are Act, 1972 and amended Acts. It is now appropriate for the the sole or prime pollinators of several nectariferous plants Government of India to revisit this issue and consider that flower only at night (e.g. kapok Ceiba, petai Parkia, removing these pollinators and seed dispersers from the list durian Durio, Oroxylum, stinking passion Passiflora and of vermin in the Wildlife (Protection) Act. banana Musa), many of which are economically important. Keywords Conservation policy, fruit bats, India, pollina- For example, Ceiba pentandra yields a commercially valu- tion, seed dispersal, vermin, Wildlife Amended Acts able fibre, which is used for stuffing cushions and mat- tresses (Fujita & Tuttle, 1991). Durio and Parkia fruits are commercially important foods in some parts of South-East Asia (Fujita, 1988). Zoochory (seed dispersal by animals) is particularly wide- NATARAJAN SINGARAVELAN* and GANAPATHY MARIMUTHU Department of Animal Behaviour & Physiology, Madurai Kamaraj University, Madurai, spread among pioneer plants and nearly half of the most India. abundant species are bat-dispersed (Charles-Dominique, PAUL A. RACEY (Corresponding author) School of Biological Sciences, 1986). Fruit bats disperse seeds in two ways. Fruits may University of Aberdeen, Tillydrone Avenue, Aberdeen, AB24 2TZ, UK. E-mail [email protected] be carried away from the parent tree and the seeds sub- sequently dropped under a feeding roost. Alternatively, *Current address: Institute of Evolution, University of Haifa, Mount Carmel, Israel. smaller seeds are ingested along with the fruit pulp and Received 26 February 2008. Revision requested 16 May 2008. pass through the gut to be voided in the faeces, often Accepted 4 July 2008. away from parent trees. The success of self-regeneration ª 2009 Fauna & Flora International, Oryx, 43(4), 608–613 doi:10.1017/S0030605309990391 Printed in the United Kingdom Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.35.234, on 30 Sep 2021 at 14:08:10, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605309990391 Are fruit bats vermin? 609 for many tropical trees improves if their propagules are Fruit bats of India moved away from the parents (Janzen, 1983). Smaller 120 pteropodid bats can fly up to 35 km nightly in search of Thirteen of the bat species in India are pteropodids 1 1997 food, and the larger ones (Pteropus spp.) can fly for (Table ; Bates & Harrison, ). Pteropus giganteus, longer distances (Nelson, 1965). Because they defecate or Rousettus leschenaultii and Cynopterus sphinx are dis- drop large numbers of seeds in flight, these bats are able tributed throughout most of India, generally in lowland 10 to move seeds over longer distances and wider areas than areas. The remaining species are restricted mainly to 1997 any other rainforest animals. In addition, it has been forested and island areas (Bates & Harrison, ). For ex- suggested that passage through the bat gut improves the ample, the lesser short-nosed fruit bat Cynopterus brachyo- 1999 levels of seed germination (Izhaki et al., 1995). tis (Balasingh et al., ) and Salim Ali’s fruit bat Latidens 2003 Plants that have relatively large-seeded fruits are con- salimalii (Singaravelan & Marimuthu, ) are confined to sumed by fewer dispersers, and depend on fewer species the south, especially to the Western Ghats of Tamil Nadu of mammals (Corlett, 1998). The carriage of such fruits is (and possibly also in Kerala). The island flying fox Pteropus considered to be the primary dispersal role of Pteropus hypomelanus lives only on the Andaman islands, the Nic- (Richards, 1995). These pteropodid bats are thus important obar flying fox Pteropus faunulus is endemic to the Nicobar vehicles of plant dispersal and are able to bridge the gaps islands, and the large or Malayan flying fox Pteropus between widely separated forest fragments (Corlett, 1998). vampyrus and black-eared flying fox Pteropus melanotus Several of the world’s most important domesticated food are present on both island archipelagos (Aul, 2006). Sim- staples, including bananas, plantain, breadfruit and man- ilarly Ratanaworabhan’s fruit bat Megaerops niphanae and goes, continue to rely on flying foxes for their propagation the greater long-tongued fruit bat Macroglossus sobrinus in the wild (Fujita & Tuttle, 1991). However, bananas are are restricted to north-east India. spread vegetatively and mangoes are planted by humans Detailed studies on the foraging activity of the three in rural villages in India. Wide-ranging seed dispersal en- ubiquitous bats P. giganteus, R. leschenaultii and C. sphinx courages genetic exchange between fragments of forests or reveal their role as pollinators of several plant species isolated populations of certain species and decreases the (Table 2). There is no evidence of individuals of the remain- chances of inbreeding (Loveless & Hamrick, 1984). ing 10 species, including Pteropus species on the Nicobar Through pollination of bat-dependent flowers and dis- and Andaman islands, either being caught in lowland persal of seeds into forest gaps and clearings, tropical bats areas or causing damage to commercial fruit orchards. This play an essential role in forest ecology (Cox et al., 1991; suggests that these species rely on wild fruits that are Fujita & Tuttle, 1991). Thus, they play an important role in available in their forest and island habitats. For example, secondary succession as well as in maintaining the com- remnants of wild fruits (the bead tree Eleocarpus oblongus, positional heterogeneity of tropical forests (Wang & Smith, the Ceylon plum Prunus ceylanicus and the Indian laurel 2002). fig Ficus macrocarpa) were collected at the night roosts of TABLE 1 Name, size and distribution of the 13 species of fruit bats in various states of India (Bates & Harrison, 1997). Forearm mean Bat species length (mm) Distribution in states Greater long-tongued fruit bat Macroglossus 47.3 Arunachal Pradesh, Megalaya, Mizoram, Tripura, sobrinus West Bengal Blanford’s fruit bat Sphaerias blanfordi 54.9 Arunachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal Ratanaworabhan’s fruit bat Megaerops niphanae 58.2 Arunachal Pradesh, West Bengal Lesser short-nosed fruit bat Cynopterus brachyotis 60.3 Kerala, Tamil
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