Causes and Consequences of Sociality in Bats

O f the 1116 recognized bat species, 930 belong to the "microbats," which occur on all continents except Antarctica, and 186 belong to the "megabats," which are confined to the Old World tropics The phylogenetic relationship between the two groups of bats is complex, with megabats nesting among microbat lineages. Megabats, which range from 15 to 1500 grams (g) in body mass, differ from microbats, which range from 2 to 160 g, in their sensory and feeding ecology. Whereas microbats use sophisticated echolocation for orientation and eat a varied diet including arthropods, small vertebrates, fruit, nectar, pollen, and even blood, megabats orient themselves mostly through vision and olfaction and feed exclusively on fruit, pollen, and nectar