Welcome to another COSTA RICA week on tropicalbats.com. For the next week or more I will be posting photos from Costa Rica. Most will be from the Firestone Center for Restoration Ecology (FCRE from here on out) but will note if any are from elsewhere.
To get things started... Shortly after arriving this year at the FCRE I had a short walk around the ecology center to look at what's new and all that kinda stuff one does after being away for a year. And while looking at this one small palm tree outside one of the dorm rooms I saw two faces staring back at me. A quick photograph allowed me to identify them as tent-making bats (Uroderma bilobatum). These bats chew the ribs of plant leaves to sorta droop them over into a tent. There are hundreds of these tents on the property at any given time, and on several different species of plants, but here they just cut a little parallel line beside the main rib and it was hard to even notice that the leave had been modified.
Visible, but hard to notice, is a white line that starts near the nape of the neck and goes down the back. Beautiful bats.
To get things started... Shortly after arriving this year at the FCRE I had a short walk around the ecology center to look at what's new and all that kinda stuff one does after being away for a year. And while looking at this one small palm tree outside one of the dorm rooms I saw two faces staring back at me. A quick photograph allowed me to identify them as tent-making bats (Uroderma bilobatum). These bats chew the ribs of plant leaves to sorta droop them over into a tent. There are hundreds of these tents on the property at any given time, and on several different species of plants, but here they just cut a little parallel line beside the main rib and it was hard to even notice that the leave had been modified.
Visible, but hard to notice, is a white line that starts near the nape of the neck and goes down the back. Beautiful bats.
A pair of tent-making bats (Uroderma bilobatum) in a tent made out of a palm leaf at the FCRE
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