Nov

28

2007
 
 

Forty two degrees C



Extreme climate events take flying-foxes to the brink

If you can't take the heat you shouldn't hang aroundJanuary 13 and 14, 2002 must have been bleak days for Justin Welbergen and colleagues, as they collected the corpses of thousands of Australian fruit bats whose deaths they had documented the day before. The bats, mainly grey-headed Pteropus poliocephalus and black flying-foxes P. alecto had succumbed to an extreme heat wave, with the temperature at Dallis Park, New South Wales, topping 42.9°C – that’s 107.6°F. Writing in Proc. Royal Soc. B this week, Cambridge University’s Welbergen presents an analysis of the tragic die-off – one of at least nineteen to have taken place since 1994. In mixed colonies, P. alecto fared worse than P. poliocephalus: juveniles and adult females were far less tolerant of the searing heat than males. Extreme climatic events are expected to become more common, so monitoring roosts when the mercury is set to soar above the critical mark sounds like a good idea. That way, falling off the perch might not mean the end. Source: Welbergen JA, Klose SM, Markus N & Eby P (2007) Climate change and the effects of temperature extremes on Australian flying-foxes. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2007.1385

Image © Jan Rihak

Filed Under Climate change, Endangered species, Monitoring | 

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