This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: New research from the University of St Andrews has created the largest combined study of bat genomes and fossils ever undertaken, finding that bats most likely originated in Europe around 65 million years ago before spreading across the world. The work also reveals that echolocation, like flight, evolved near the dawn of bat evolution and lays the groundwork for research into the genetic basis of bats' exceptional longevity and disease resistance, with potential relevance to human health.
Published today (Wednesday, Sept. 23) in Nature, an international team of 137 researchers from 64 countries, working together as part of the Bat1K consortium, combined genomic and fossil evidence to show that bats, and thus mammalian flight, most likely originated in Europe around 65 million years ago. The results overturned previous hypotheses proposing Asian, African or North American origins. Their earliest descendants then dispersed into Africa, establishing a Europe–Africa hub from which bats expanded into Asia, the Americas and Australia.
Covering 103 species and representing every one of the currently recognized 21 bat families, the team assembled the largest collection of high-quality bat genomes to date. Researchers combined state-of-the-art DNA sequencing and computational methods to generate and compare these genomes and identify the genes they contained. The researchers combined the genomes with 44 fossil bats from across the globe to reconstruct the evolutionary history of the world's only flying mammals.
Building this dataset required samples collected over decades from bats across the world, including representatives of some of the rarest and most unusual bat families found in the most remote locations. Bats are among the most extraordinary mammals on Earth. They are the only mammals capable of true powered flight.
Most bats orient and hunt in complete darkness using sound alone. With more than 1,500 species distributed across the globe, bats account for one-fifth of all living mammals and play vital roles in maintaining healthy ecosystems by pollinating plants, dispersing seeds and consuming vast numbers of insect pests. Yet despite their extraordinary biology and ecological importance, scientists have struggled for decades to answer some of the most fundamental questions about bat evolution.
Where did bats come from? How are the bat families related? When did flight and echolocation emerge?
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