Microbats
Did you know?
There are approximately 68 species of microbats found in Australia
35 of which are classified as threatened.
Microbats tend to be not much larger than a mouse with a wingspan of around 25cm.
Microbats
Diet
Microbats can devour several hundred insects per hour, or as much as 40% of their body weight in a single night. They feed voraciously on a wide variety of grubs, moths, mosquitoes, flying termites, and other insects. Some species catch insects in their mouths, while others use their tail membrane as a scoop and consume their prey as an inflight meal.
Microbats have poor eyesight, relying instead on echolocation to navigate and feed. Echolocation is a sophisticated method of bouncing back high frequency sound waves from surrounding objects. This technique enables microbats to determine their prey’s size, shape, speed, and distance. Microbat calls at more than 100kHz, which sometimes last only a few milliseconds, are beyond the normal hearing range of humans (<20kHz).
Microbats
Habitat
Natural roost sites for microbats include caves and crevices, under the bark of trees, tree hollows, and vegetation.
It takes more than 150 years to form even small useful tree hollows. With the availability of natural old-growth trees rapidly diminishing, competition with other species of hollow-dependent wildlife can force microbats to seek shelter in man-made alternatives. They are often found roosting in structures such as buildings, tunnels, roof cavities, under bridges, and even inside closed garden umbrellas.
Artificial hollows carved by professional arborists are proving to be an effective solution that offer a similar microclimate and thermal properties to natural hollows. Bat roost boxes achieve varying degrees of success depending on factors such as design, installation height and orientation of the box. Unfortunately, artificial alternatives will never offset the loss of old hollow-bearing trees.
Microbats
Survival Challenges
Aside from habitat loss, microbats face many other threats, such as bush fires, pesticides, roost site disturbances and persecution.
Destruction of roosting and feeding habitat to accommodate renewable energy infrastructure is an emerging challenge for wildlife in Australia. Microbat fatalities can occur through collision with wind turbine blades and barotrauma (injury caused by a change in air pressure that compresses or expands gas). Barotrauma may also result in sub-lethal injuries, such as hearing impairment, meaning debilitated bats escape the turbines to die later elsewhere.
Due to their small size, microbats are prey species for birds, rats, snakes, and cats.