UP maps flying fox movements in PH to aid conservation efforts

The University of the Philippines conducted a study on the movement patterns of flying foxes in the country to help improve their conservation and management.

Flying foxes are large fruit bats that primarily feed on fruits and flowers.

Traveling more than 6,000 kilometers in a year, flying foxes are among the most far-ranging bats in the world.

To assess their movement patterns, researchers captured nine flying foxes from three species and fitted them with lightweight GPS collars.

The species included the giant golden-crowned flying fox (Acerodon jubatus), the large flying fox (Pteropus vampyrus), and the small flying fox (P. hypomelanus).

“There’s just not a lot of data about flying fox movements in the Philippines. There have only been two studies about it so far, and both [covered] the same two species (A. jubatus and P. vampyrus) and were [conducted] in the same place (Subic), which forms a fraction of these species’ range. Meanwhile, no such studies have been done for P. hypomelanus at all, anywhere,” researcher Rio Renato Constantino said.

The data suggest that A. jubatus and P. vampyrus may travel farther than P. hypomelanus.

The first two species also differ in how consistently they return to the same roosts, how often they revisit feeding sites, and how they use a wide range of habitats—including built-up areas and farmlands heavily modified by humans.

“By learning where they go, we learn more about their habitat use, what kinds of places they like to frequent. Do they stay in forests? Do they visit cities often?” Constantino said.

“At sunset, they fly out of the roost and disappear into the night. Where do they go? That’s what we wanted to answer,” he added.

However, researchers pointed out that the limited sample size prevents them from generalizing the findings to the wider population.

They also stressed the importance of conserving and managing flying fox populations, as the animals serve important ecological functions.

“They serve a number of important ecological functions, among them seed dispersal. After a flying fox eats fruit, it poops out the seed, often a considerable distance away from the tree where it obtained its meal. In this way, flying foxes help maintain fruiting tree populations and help forest regeneration,” Constantino said.

Published in the international scientific journal Mammalia, the study was conducted by UP Diliman researchers Constantino, Czarina Espiritu, Maria Sabrina Tabeta, Simeon Gabriel Bejar, and Dr. Mariano Roy Duya.

They collaborated with Kirk Taray, Jezryl Jaeger Garcia, Dorothy Mariano, Dr. Mary Grace Dacuma, and Dr. Phillip Alviola of UP Los Baños.

The study was also conducted in collaboration with Sophie Borthwick, Dr. Dolyce Low, and Dr. Ian Mendenhall of Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore; Dr. Eric Laing of the Uniformed Services University in Bethesda, USA; and Dr. Catalino Demetria and Dr. Fedelino Malbas of the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine. —VBL, GMA News