Bat bugs (Cimicidae, Heteroptera): a possible cause of roost switching by bats
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| Year of publication | 2008 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | Previous results have shown frequent movements among different shelters of crevice-dwelling bats. Low roost fidelity of some dwelling bat species reduces the reproductive success of ectoparasites. Up to the present, studies concerning bat ectoparasites have mainly dealt with species which live on their hosts bodies permanently whereas the relations between bat species roosting in crevices and their ectoparasites living in the same shelters but mostly without physical contact with their hosts, are often based only on guesses. Sessions in the volary equipped with two bat boxes were carried out. One of the boxes was loaded with ectoparasites, the other served as a control and new roost for bats which left loaded box. The differences in the level of bat autogrooming, movements inside experimental boxes and leaving the boxes between experiments with bat bugs and controls without bat bugs were significant. Allogrooming was observed only in few cases therefore hypothesis of cooperation among individual bats in defence against bat bugs was rejected. Experiments with artificial parasitation show that leaving a roost of confined space occupied by high number of ectoparasites, i.e. roost switching, is a natural behaviour of crevice-dwelling bat species. The study was supported by grants No. MSM0021622416 and 206/07/P098. |
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