Gardener bats: in Brazil, fruit scents lure them in to replant the forest
A single bat can drop hundreds of seeds in one night. And, unlike birds, it does so in mid-flight.
In Brazil, scientists have found unexpected helpers for bringing back the forest: fruit-eating bats. And they’ve worked out how to bring them where they’re needed: with the smell of fruit.
Night-time gardeners
In the Atlantic Forest, fruit bats disperse seeds of more than 140 plant species. They drop between 600 and almost 26,000 seeds per hectare per day, even on degraded land. A single bat can drop hundreds of seeds in one night.
They have an advantage over birds: they digest in about 30 minutes and drop seeds in mid-flight, while most birds do so when they land. That way seeds reach open fields where a bird rarely stops.
The scent trick
Because these bats find fruit by smell, the team of Sandra Bos Mikich (Embrapa) and Gledson Bianconi (Federal Institute of Paraná) tested scented artificial fruits using oil from pariparoba, a Piper plant. They placed them in a crop field 50 metres from the forest, in Vila Rica do Espírito Santo State Park (Paraná).
It worked: the bats came out into the open to look for them. 73.3% of the seeds they left there were from pioneer species, the first to colonise a site and prepare the soil for others.
With care
It isn’t a magic fix. Restoration specialist Pedro Brancalion, of the University of São Paulo, warns that bats don’t distinguish between native and invasive plants. And the method only works where bats are already present and forest fragments remain nearby. The researchers see it as a complement that could make restoration cheaper.
More help for nature in the southern hemisphere: the Burts’ 120 million donation in Australia.
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