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Greater horseshoe bats keep it in the family

16 September 2005

The notion of sharing your grandmother's new sexual partner might seem unappealing to us, but a study of wild greater horseshoe bats reveals that female relatives regularly share male mates, yet nearly always avoid their blood relatives.

The study, published in this week's Nature, was led by Dr Stephen Rossiter as part of a long-term collaboration between scientists at Queen Mary, University of London, and the University of Bristol. The study used genetic analysis to look at breeding patterns over 10 years in a colony of around 40 greater horseshoe bats, Rhinolophus ferrumequinum, one of Britain's rarest bats, from Gloucestershire.

The team, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, found that while a female might mate with the same male as her grandmother, she won't mate with her own grandfather. As you might expect, things quickly get very confusing, for example, the study revealed several cases in which a female and her maternal half-aunt were also half-sisters on their father's side!

Why might these breeding patterns evolve? "One possibility is that by increasing kinship, sharing sexual partners strengthens social ties and promotes greater levels of co-operation within the colony," says Dr Rossiter. "In fact, the study also found another way in which these bats strengthen levels of kinship, with most females returning to the same male over many years."

This work, based on one of the longest-running and most detailed studies of a wild animal population worldwide, illustrates the hidden complexity that can underlie animal mating patterns in natural conditions, and could have important implications for conservation strategies in a range of important mammalian species.

Further information

Siān Wherrett
Queen Mary University of London
Tel: 020 7882 7454

NERC Press Office
Natural Environment Research Council
Polaris House, North Star Avenue
Swindon, SN2 1EU
Tel: 01793 411561
Mob: 07917 557215

Dr Stephen Rossiter
School of Biological & Chemical Sciences
Queen Mary, University of London
Tel: 020 7882 7528
Fax: 020 8983 0973

Notes

1. 'Mate fidelity and intra-lineage polygyny in greater horseshoe bats' was published in the 15 September issue of Nature (Vol. 437).

A high-resolution image of a Greater Horseshoe Bat is available on request.

2. Queen Mary is the fourth largest of the Colleges of the University of London. Its roots lie in four historic colleges: Queen Mary College, Westfield College, St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College and the London Hospital Medical College. Pooling strengths, expertise and resources, Queen Mary is now fully integrated.

The College currently has over 10000 undergraduate and postgraduate students, with an academic and support staff of around 2600. It is organised into the four faculties - Arts; Engineering & Mathematical Sciences; Law & Social Sciences; and Natural Sciences - and Barts and The London, Queen Mary's School of Medicine & Dentistry. It is a research university, with over 80% of research staff working in departments where research is of international or national excellence (RAE 2001). It has a strong international reputation, with over 20% of students coming from over 100 countries.

3. NERC is one of the UK's research councils. It uses a budget of about £350m a year to fund and carry out impartial scientific research in the sciences of the environment. NERC trains the next generation of independent environmental scientists. It is addressing some of the key questions facing mankind such as global warming, renewable energy and sustainable economic development.

Press release: 44/05