We are super excited that our new paper has been published in the Journal of Mammalogy. We have also made it open access, so everyone can access and read it via this link: https://academic.oup.com/jmammal/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jmammal/gyz081/5510503?searchresult=1 What did we do?We investigated bat wing tears. We all know that bats have large, thin wings that are particularly susceptible to tearing. For this reason, they have particular anatomical specializations, such as:
We described wing anatomy using histological techniques, imaging, and material testing. Tear information was also collected from bat carers across the UK (including tear type, position, time in rehabilitation, and possible causes). what did we find?The most tears were found on the section of the wing closest to the body, called the plagiopatagium. Our results suggest that the position of the plagiopatagium (the most proximal wing section to the body), rather than its anatomy, influenced the number, location, and orientation of wing tears. Indeed, the plagiopatagium was not significantly weaker than any other wing section. The position of the tears, close to the body and toward the trailing edge, suggests that they are caused by predator attacks, such as from a cat, rather than by collisions. Consistent with this, 38% of P. pipistrellus individuals had confirmed wing tears caused by cats, with an additional 38% identified by bat carers as suspected cat attacks. The plagiopatagium had the lowest number of blood vessels and highest amounts of elastin fibers suggesting that, unfortunately, healing may take longer in this section. What next? Further investigations into the causes of tears, and their effect on flight capabilities, will help to improve bat rehabilitation. Do keep watching here as we are getting these papers together right now, so will have more to say about this very soon! Rana handed in her PhD thesis last month and is due to viva in July, which is exciting – this is only the first paper from her PhD thesis, so do keep an eye out for more. Big thanks to you!Many thanks to all the bat rehabilitators that supplied photographs for the study. Special thanks to Hazel Ryan and Sally Humphreys, who supplied the majority of our samples, and Maggie Brown, who advertised our study in Bat Care News. We are also grateful to Joanne Horton for helping to develop the tear classification system we used in the paper, as part of her MSc project.
We will continue to let you know our progress on the data, and keep our publications open so you can all access them.
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AuthorBat Research Group at Manchester Metropolitan University Archives
October 2017
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