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: Bats are not only a marvel of myth and imagination but also of energy use, working at the height of their energetic ceiling to fly the night skies the world over. They've captured the attention of University of Rhode Island Ph.D. student Travis Bayer, who seems to have an affinity for elusive and mysterious animals.
In fact, Bayer's master's thesis centered on tracking very large neotropical bats (Phyllostomus hastatus) in Panama. With a wingspan exceeding 2 feet (0.6 meters), they're the second-largest species of bat in the Americas and possess an exceptionally powerful bite. They also have fascinating foraging strategies and behaviors.
The greater spear-nosed bat combines an incredibly flexible diet with a surprisingly complex social life. Found as far north as Belize all the way down to southern Brazil, the bats' strong bite affords them the ability to feed on a wide diversity of food items. This flexibility sets them apart from many bats people are familiar with in the U.S., where many common species are primarily insectivorous.
"I sometimes think of them as the garbage disposals of the bat world because they're such generalists!" Bayer said. "They eat an incredible variety of foods, including insects, fruit, nectar, small vertebrates and even other bats." Bayer says that the greater spear-nosed bat also has its own group culture and unique social behavior, exhibiting cooperation traits beyond foraging. The females form long-lasting social groups, with one dominant male, each group occupying its own little pocket in a cave ceiling.
These groups can maintain their social bonds for more than 16 years, Bayer says, even though they're not related; even when the dominant male changes, the female group can persist. Bayer, whose research focuses on animal movement, studied the greater spear-nosed bat in Panama with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI). Now in his new paper in The Journal of Experimental Biology, Bayer describes the results of that research, showing how measurements of body acceleration from animal-borne accelerometers could provide a reliable, noninvasive way to estimate energy expenditure in wild bats.
By comparing acceleration measurements with the bats' heart rates, he found that acceleration could reliably predict energy expenditure throughout a foraging night. This approach has enormous potential for conservation work, he said, because it gives researchers a way to understand how environmental changes are affecting animals physiologically, not just where they occur or whether their populations are declining. "By validating accelerometry as a reliable proxy for energy expenditure, we now have a new tool that we can use to explore how environmental change affects bats' energy budgets, how those physiological costs might influence their performance and long-term survival, and how we can use that information to guide more effective conservation efforts." Bayer has a strong tech focus in his work, bringing emerging technologies into his conservation work at URI and Pathos Wildlife, the conservation nonprofit he founded in 2025.
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