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The foraging movements of 13 Pteropus alecto from four camps in suburban Brisbane were monitored over two summer and one winter season between 1998 and 2000. By means of radio-telemetry, the flying-foxes were tracked to their foraging sites over 49 nights for a total of 237 h. Data from flying-foxes tracked from dusk to dawn showed that bats travelled directly to a foraging site early in the night and undertook smaller movements between foraging sites for the remainder of the night. Bats undertook a greater number of nocturnal movements during a food resource shortage than during a season of greater resource abundance. Mean distances (±s.e.) travelled from camps to foraging sites varied between camps and ranged from 2.9 ± 0.3 km ( n = 24) to 7.6 ± 0.07 km ( n = 2). In all three seasons, flying-foxes foraged on a variety of native and exotic plant species. Dominant exotics included Cocos palms ( Sygarus romanzoffiana ), Chinese elm trees ( Celtis sinensis ) and Cadaghi ( Corymbia torrelliana ), while highly utilised native food plants included figs ( Ficus spp.), grevilleas ( Grevillea spp.) and bottlebrushes ( Callistemon spp.).
Markus et al. (Tue,) studied this question.