Hundreds of spectators line the Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin, Texas to watch millions of Mexican free-tailed bats forage for insects. Photos by Arlene Marturano
The last week in October is South Carolina Bat Week, an annual celebration to recognize the important role of bats in nature and ecosystems and to raise awareness about the need for bat conservation.
The South Carolina Department of Natural Resources employs a bat biologist, Jennifer Kindel, to conduct research on bats and inform the public on the beneficial role of the 15 bat species native to the state. She runs, manages, and funds DNR bat projects including Bat Watch, a citizen science program that monitors bats emerging from their daytime roosting sites in summer. www.dnr.sc.gov/wildlife/bats/batwatch.html
Kindel presented her Fly Like a Bat program to the Garden Club Council of Greater Columbia. The 15 species of bats found in South Carolina are Big Brown, Brazilian Freetailed, Eastern Red, Eastern Small-footed, Gray, Evening, Hoary, Little Brown, Northern Longeared, Northern Yellow, Rafinesque’s Big-eared, Seminole, Silver-haired, Southeastern, and Tri-colored. Ten species roost in colonies and five roost alone in trees.
Bat roosts on house in Richland County.
Bats, the only flying mammal, are beneficial to our gardens and agricultural crops. Bats eat a variety of things depending on the species including insects, fruit, seeds, pollen, and nectar. Insect-eating bats are the most common in South Carolina.
Many bats in the United States are insectivores. In fact, bats are the leading predator of night flying insects such as moths and mosquitos. The Little Brown bat can eat 1,000 insects per night.
Bats are important to the health of the natural world and the economy. Although we may not always see them, bats work the night shift all around the world eating tons of insects, pollinating flowers, and dispersing seeds that grow new plants. In South Carolina alone bats save the agricultural industry 115 million dollars annually in pest suppression services and help quell mosquito-borne diseases like West Nile virus.
But bat populations are in trouble due to a fungal disease known as White Nose Syndrome (WNS). The devastating white fungal disease forms on the muzzle, ears, and wing membranes of hibernating bats and has killed over six million hibernating bats since first detected in New York in 2006. It was first diagnosed in South Carolina in 2013 at Table Rock State Park. In 2014 WNS was found in a bat in Richland County. Humans do not contract the disease.
What can you do to welcome this natural organic pest control into your garden? Provide food (flowers and trees bring insects), water, and shelter (trees or a certified bat box). Visit www.merlintuttle.org/selecting-a-quality-bat-house.
Plant a garden for bats with night blooming flowers, including cleome, evening primrose, four o’clock, goldenrod, moonvine, nicotiana, purple coneflower, salvia, sunflower, yarrow, and yucca. Use native plants as they evolved to attract native insects. Consider successional bloom time when selecting plants. Native trees such as oaks, beech, hickory, pine, and dogwood provide roosting sites and insects for bats.
Jennifer Kindel, bat biologist at SCDNR
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