Sentences with phrase «for vampire bats»

According to previous research by Galetti's group, feral pigs and cross-bred pig - boars are a public health hazard because they have become a major source of food for vampire bats (Desmodus rotundus) and have thereby fueled an increase in this rabies vector.

Not exact matches

After controlling for the availability of the animals, the scientists calculated that vampire bats were seven times more likely to feed on pigs than chance would predict, the team reports in the current issue of the Journal of Mammalogy.

«Cows are the main food source for common vampire bats, but there were no cows in Central and South America when vampire bats evolved,» says Riskin.

The classic Darwinian theory of natural selection suggests that individuals who cooperate threaten their own evolutionary fitness, since cooperation always involves a cost to the self (the vampire bat that shares blood has less food for itself).

Though many species of bats roost in groups, vampire bats are unique in their sharing of blood meals and in their propensity for social grooming.

Apart from feeding on domestic animals, vampire bats occasionally took blood from wild tapirs, so the method may be useful for determining the distribution of elusive mammal prey.

«We were surprised to get a result that suggests that vampire bats may not be the reservoir for this retrovirus but might have been infected independently of monkeys and rats by a yet undiscovered reservoir,» says Marina Escalera, leading author of the study.

In diet studies, the DNA metabarcoding technique is normally only used to assess diet, but in this study the researchers go one step further and show for the first time that the technique can also give insights into the vampire bat's population structure.

«This new method to simultaneously screen many vampire bat samples for both diet and population structure is of value to future studies on vampire bat biology and for assessment of vampire bat related pathogen transmission risks.

And we more or less get this additional information for free because the vampire bat's DNA is found in the DNA that we extract from blood meal and faecal samples,» says Kristine Bohmann, who adds:

«Vampire bats are usually shy of humans, but rabies makes them lose their shyness and seek humans for a blood meal,» Fooks told New Scientist.

Baby vampire bats go for blood right away, licking their mothers» mouths for red regurgitation within minutes of birth.

For decades, researchers have debated whether it's fair to consider vampire bats as examples of natural altruism.

For example, we are continuing to generate the base of evidence needed to empower science based control of the spread of rabies within vampire bats in Latin America, but also exploring fundamental questions about cross-species transmission and the role of host and pathogen genomics in studying disease ecology».

In an article published in the journal Acta Chiropterologica, researchers in the country have documented for the first time the presence of human blood in the feces of the hairy - legged vampire bat (Diphylla ecaudata).

An international group of scientists including several from the German Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW) analysed the genome of vampire bats and the microorganisms that live in their gut and asked the question how much the viruses contained in the blood may affect the vampire bats.

It also boasts some surprisingly good visual effects for such a low - budget production, including cool vampire - to - bat transformations and buckets of gore.

We have candles for you to whip, we have vampires, bats, zombies, werewolves, wargs.

They sound so easy at first, but before you know it you'll be fighting bats in the school ventilation system for a vampire.

She's desperate for a pair of plastic fangs so she can trick or treat as a vampire bat on Halloween, with tomato sauce dribbling down her chin as fake blood.