New impetus for research on evolution of bats
New life is being breathed into the research on the early evolution of bats. A recently discovered bat fossil has generated interesting new insights on what the primeval bat may have looked like. But how does this fossil fit within the bigger picture?
To find the answer to this question, Tim Rietbergen returned to the US to make a further study of the fossil in the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York. Thanks in part to a second contribution from the Leiden University Fund, his successful initial research has been given a further immportant scientific impetus.
To date, we have no answer to the question of where the oldest bats originate from. But this new fossil shows clearly that the life of the bat, in particular its behaviour, was very different in the past. During his second visit to the prestigious American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), Tim focused on charting the morphological characteristics of the newly found fossil and adding them to an existing online database on the MorphoBank website. 'I have examined and described a total of 699 characteristics: for each tooth of a few millimetres in size, around 25 characteristics have been described and compared with other fossilised bat remains, as well as with present-day bats (of which there are 1,400 types),' Tim explained.
But what does all that teach us? From the characteristics observed, a pattern emerges of important structures from the skeleton of the bat. What's particularly interesting with these oldest bats is studying their behaviour. By examining these characteristics, we have learned that originally bats were not able to fly, and that flight is something that developed gradually.
Why fundamental research?
Tim Rietbergen conducts fundamental research that contributes to a sound basis on which all applied science can be given free rein. Quite simply, you need to have good basic knowledge before you can explore other applications. Bats, of which there are roughly 1,400 different types, are the world's third largest group of mammals. They are found almost everywhere in the world, apart from the Arctic region and a few remote islands.
"We don't actually know where bats originate from, who their ancestors were, how they developed flight or how they evolved echo location. We need to look at these earliest fossils to try to find the answers to these questions,' Tim explains.
"My research won't contribute directly to finding a new medicine, for example, but it is clearly the basis for research where bats are an important factor. This could be research on diseases that can be spread by bats, such as Ebola or rabies.' Many bats are no larger than a mouse, but they can live fifteen times as long. 'That has to do with the length of the telomers on their chromosomes. For this kind of research it's useful to be able to fall back on a good basic knowledge of the origin and evolution of bats.'
From New York to Mexico and Peru
After completing his research in New York, Tim then flew to the North American Society of Bat Research in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
"I met a lot of the big names from the bat world and discussed different research activities with them. It's great to be surounded by people who are just as enthusiastic about bats as I am!'
Tim says that he has not only learned an enormous amount from the roughly two hundred presentations at the conference, but that it has brought him a lot personally. 'This was my first conference and although I was really nevous, the AMNH family really took me under their wing. During my visit to the conference I was also invited to take part in fieldwork in Peru and I am involved in bat inventories in Borneo in Malaysia. It was a thoroughly successful conference!