A landmark study revealed a new understanding of where bats likely originated 65 million years ago — in Europe, rather than in Asia, Africa or North America, as previously thought.
The study, published Wednesday in Nature, challenged existing hypotheses about the origin of bats, and aimed to fill holes in the evolutionary history of the unique creatures. They are the only mammals capable of true sustained flight, they use echolocation to hunt in the dark and they are able to tolerate diseases without getting sick — which many scientists believe holds clues for human medical science.
The new research is the largest combined bat genome and fossil study yet — taking about a decade of teamwork from 137 researchers from 64 countries to better understand the species. The study examined 103 bat genomes and 44 fossils, representing one of each of the currently recognized 21 bat families. The researchers also pinpointed the origin of the mammal’s flight.
“We wanted to incorporate the landmasses and how they changed. We wanted to account for the fact that the bats can fly. And so, we did this for the first time,” said Emma Teeling, co-founder and co-director of Bat1K, a consortium that led the study. “… And then you were able to look at how did they fly around and where they evolved.”
Scientists said the massive effort was worth it. Bats, the researchers said, are a gold mine for scientists, comprising more than one fifth of all living mammal species across their 1,500 species.
The work was led by Bat1K Consortium, founded in 2017 by Teeling and Sonya Vernes, with the goal of bringing together bat scientists across the globe to sequence the genomes of all living bat species.
Joe Walston, head of global conservation at the Wildlife Conservation Society, who spent 25 years in Central Africa and Southeast Asia studying bats, called the recent work a “major step forward” for bat research.
“It doesn’t answer all the questions and it is not definitive. But it gives us a much broader understanding of the history of flight in wildlife as well as some of the early developments of echolocation,” said Walston, who was not involved in the study. “… How, and where and why this group of extraordinary species have such extraordinary skills, talents and abilities that we would like and will need to understand more.”
Certain species of bats live up to 20 to 30 years, edging out similar mammals of their size. And they have uniquely resistant immune systems allowing them to carry dangerous viruses (like Ebola, Marburg and coronaviruses) without getting sick. They have a rare resistance to cancer, according to Walston and other experts.
“I think the world should be paying particular attention to bats, both because they are so special and unique in the wildlife kingdom — and that alone should be enough for us to be able to conserve them,” Walston said. “But in addition to that, they hold so many possibilities for the betterment of humankind.”
Nancy Simmons, who has studied bats and their evolution for 35 years, assisted with some of the study data, providing bat tissue samples from her research in Belize, and a collection of phenotypic traits and fossil data that helped researchers build evolutionary trees. She said to get the most accurate “high quality” genomes — without missing information needed for a complete sequence — this required sacrifice.
“We go out in the field and we catch most of almost all the species included in this study are relatively common species, so we might catch dozens of them on a field trip, and we would euthanize one and then we would collect as many tissues as possible from it,” she said.
Simmons said this is the best method for the project’s overall goal: Having complete genomes allowed for direct comparisons of the species.
With the study, researchers wanted to provide a centralized source of data about all bats, making space for future specialized research about different species and their functions in their environments. Bats are key players in their ecosystems, experts said, providing pest control, plant pollination and dispersing seeds.
One species, the hammerhead fruit bat, has a bulbous, elongated snout, almost like a “moose with wings,” said Sarah Olson, a study author and member of the Wildlife Conservation Society. Studying them in Republic of Congo, she said she’s seen them carry fruit in their mouth. (Separately, bats are the subject of many viral videos where they are seen eating fruit.)
“They’re the engineers of the rainforest,” she said. “They’re moving seeds around and they’re basically the farmers or seed planters for all of the rainforests that we see and all these great things that they’re eating and dispersing.”
She contributed some research to the study and described the process as a puzzle, with the study’s publication finally nailing down some of the pieces.
“This is just a really nice story of collaboration in so many dimensions,” she said about the research.
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