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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.
Bats make up more than 20% of all recognized mammal species and are found on every continent except Antarctica; they're well represented in tropical regions like Central and South America, where the greater spear-nosed bat is found. Credit: Teague O'MaraBayer, 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.
"I believe these technologies have the potential to fundamentally change how we investigate conservation problems, how quickly we can understand what's happening to threatened species, and how successfully we can turn that knowledge into solutions," he said. "The goal is to move beyond documenting that wildlife is being affected and toward developing more effective ways to protect them."
On the wingFor a flying animal, getting from one place to another is more than a matter of distance. Every flight comes at an energetic cost, and the amount of energy an animal spends can depend on how it moves, where it travels and the challenges it encounters along the way. Measuring those costs in free-ranging wildlife, however, has long been difficult.
Methods for estimating energy expenditure often require studying animals in captivity, using invasive procedures or investing substantial time and resources. However, previous research has shown that measurements of body acceleration can be used to estimate energy expenditure for some animals. Accelerometers record the animal's movements in three dimensions, capturing changes in acceleration up and down, side to side, and forward and backward. These measurements provide an indirect way to estimate how much energy the animal uses as it moves.
However, it was unclear whether this approach would work for bats, whose unique flight mechanics differ from those of most other animals.
To investigate this in bats, Bayer and his team equipped 12 greater spear-nosed bats on Isla Colón, Panama, with animal-borne sensors, called bio-loggers, that recorded heart rate, body acceleration and GPS locations. The GPS units recorded locations every minute between 6 p.m. and 5 a.m., capturing the bats' nightly journeys as they left their cave roosts to forage and returned before dawn. Each bat was tracked for approximately five nights, generating thousands of location records alongside more than 1,500 hours of acceleration and heart-rate measurements.
The key was bringing these measurements together. Acceleration sensors record changes in an animal's movement in three dimensions, providing a way to estimate the physical effort an animal expends. By comparing those measurements with heart rate, Bayer could test whether changes in body acceleration reliably reflected changes in energetic demand.
The results support using acceleration as a predictor of energy expenditure in bats, opening the door to studying their energetic costs without having to measure energy use directly.
As environmental pressures intensify and habitats become increasingly fragmented, Bayer says understanding how animals navigate energetic trade-offs in movement decisions is critical for predicting species' resilience and informing conservation strategies. He said this reliable, less invasive method to assess energy expenditure in free-living bats will help researchers better understand how the animals respond to real environmental challenges, opening up new possibilities to understand bat ecology and how bats are adjusting to shifting resources.
While greater spear-nosed bat populations are currently considered stable, many bat populations worldwide are facing challenges. Deforestation, habitat destruction, changes in land use and climate change can all alter the availability of food and the conditions animals need to survive. There are currently more than 1,500 known species of bats in the world, with new species being described every year, said Bayer.
"Many species face growing pressures from habitat loss, disease, deforestation, climate change and human disturbance, and many species remain poorly understood," Bayer said. "These gaps in our knowledge make it difficult to identify declines early and determine where conservation efforts are most urgently needed; hopefully, animal-borne technology such as this can play a role in helping fill some of those gaps."
Publication detailsTravis D. Bayer et al., Heart rate supports accelerometry as a reliable predictor of energy expenditure in bats, Journal of Experimental Biology (2026). DOI: 10.1242/jeb.251521
Who's behind this story?
Lisa LockBA art history, MA material culture. Former museum editor, paramedic, and transplant coordinator. Editing for Science X since 2021. Full profile →
Andrew ZininMaster's in physics with research experience. Long-time science news enthusiast. Plays key role in Science X's editorial success. Full profile →
Citation: Zoologist's study of wild Panamanian bats highlights use of metrics to inform bat conservation (2026, October 26) retrieved 26 October 2026 from https://phys.org/news/2026-10-zoologist-wild-panamanian-highlights-metrics.html
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