Bats! (Final Exam)

Question 1

What is the biggest bat and what is the smallest bat?

Answer 1

Smallest is the bumble bee bat

Biggest is the Giant golden crowned flying fox

Question 2

How do bats find plants?

Answer 2

They use echolocation

Question 3

What type of plants are visited by bats?

Answer 3

1. Open at night
2. Large
3. Pale or white in color
4. Smelly

Question 4

What type of bats are social altruists and how?

Answer 4

Vampire bats, and they are highly social (females)

They groom each other and feed others that didn’t successfully feed, and they develop friendships

Question 5

What are the benefits that bats have to humans and the ecosystem?

Answer 5

1. They help control insects (less pesticides)
2. They help to reseed forests and to pollinate plants
3. Their poop is highly valuable fertilizer (Guano)
4. Echolocation has provides models for sonar/radar that we use today

Question 6

What are the six things that threaten bats?

Answer 6

1. Habitat loss
2. Cat attacks
3. Lighting
4. Windfarms
5. Human killing
6. White-nose syndrome

Question 7

Describe a disease reservoir?

Answer 7

They are populations in which a pathogen is permanently maintained.

The species can be affected by the disease or not, but extended duration of pathogen shedding will make it more likely it jumps species.

Question 8

What is a spillover event?

Answer 8

When a virus jumps from a reservoir species to another animal host that has no evolutionary history with it

Question 9

How do spillovers happen?

Answer 9

1. When there is direct contact with bat saliva (bite, scratch, vampire bats)
2. Indirect contact with bodily fluids
3. Bats being eaten

Question 10

What makes bats such great reservoirs?

Answer 10

1. Evolution
2. Population size and roosting behavior
3. Long lives
4. Migration
5. Torpor and hibernation
6. Immune system

Question 11

Describe why evolution has made bats good reservoirs.

Answer 11

Viruses that evolved with bats use the same receptors and pathways that are still present in other mammals, and since they evolved with them they are usually immune but still carry it.

Question 12

Describe why population size, roosting and lifespan make bats good reservoirs.

Answer 12

1. They are the most abundant mammals in the world
2. Bats live very close together in clumps
3. Longer life means more chances for transmission

Question 13

Describe how migration makes bats good reservoirs.

Answer 13

They move all over which increases chances for new pathogens, and exchange with other bats they don’t know

Question 14

Why do torpor and hibernation make bats good reservoirs?

Answer 14

Both torpor and hibernation may be associated with reduced immune response which is why they hold on the the pathogens

Question 15

Why do the bats immune systems make them such good reservoirs?

Answer 15

Because they show persistent shedding, with little evidence of the disease

Question 16

Describe the ecology of a spillover event.

Answer 16

Requirements for a spillover:

1. Reservoir must be present
2. Must be infected and shedding
3. Must contact the intermediate host / human host at a sufficient dose to infect
4. The intermediate hosts or humans must be susceptible
5. They reservoir and the hosts must be present at the same physical location

Question 17

Why will diseases continue to emerge like this?

Answer 17

Because as bat habitat is being encroached by humans we are closer than ever, and as their habitat loss continues.