Every spring three species of nectar-feeding bats travel several hundred miles from Mexico into Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas to reach maternity roosts where they rear their young.
With tongues that can be as long as the rest of their bodies, these bats are thought to migrate along "nectar corridors." Such corridors are often along higher elevation terrain with a diverse array of flowering agave and cacti. The bats even visit backyard hummingbird feeders after dark to get a quick sugar fix!
But exact bat migration routes have been largely a mystery. Traditional methods used to track small birds are expensive and difficult to deploy on bats.
So, Bat Conservation International teamed up with Northern Arizona University’s Ancient DNA lab to try and detect DNA deposited by the bats as they feed. They developed genetic tests for each of the three bat species, which they tried out on swabs of agave flowers and hummingbird feeders. It worked — and represents a brand-new bat detection method.
Bat Conservation International uses the new DNA technique to track where the bats go, to help target their habitat restoration partnerships with ranchers and landowners across the southwest. The program includes planting thousands of baby native agaves along bat migration routes and around summer roosts.
This DNA detective work may also reveal if a single report from the Grand Canyon of a Mexican long-tongued bat, one of the nectar feeding trio, is a freak occurrence or whether this species regularly ventures farther north than previously thought.
This Earth Note was written by Diane Hope and produced by KNAU and the Sustainable Communities Program at Northern Arizona University.
