UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



DEPARTMENT BULLETIN No. 1395 



Washington, D. C. 



March, 1926 



BATS IN RELATION TO THE PRODUCTION OF GUANO 

 AND THE DESTRUCTION OF INSECTS 



By Edward W. Nelson, Chief. Bureau of Biological Purvey 



CONTENTS 



Page 



E-coiomic relations of bats 1 



The Mexican free-tailed bat 2 



Bat caves 4 



General habits of the species — 4 



Hibernation .", 



Food habits 6 



Page 



Guano deposits 6 



Artificial roosts for bats 7 



Buildings occupied 9 



The Florida free-tailed bat 10 



Malarial control by bats 10 



Summary 11 



ECONOMIC RELATIONS OF BATS 



Much has appeared in the public press in recent years about bats, 

 their valuable deposits of guano, their alleged destruction of malarial 

 and other mosquitoes, and the possibilities of increasing their use- 

 fulness to man by building artificial roosts for them, and many 

 requests for information on these subjects have come to the depart- 

 ment. L. O. Howard, chief of the Bureau of Entomology, in 

 a paper on "Mosquitoes and Bats" read before the meeting of the 

 Xew Jersey Mosquito Extermination Association in 1916 x discussed 

 the subject chiefly from the viewpoint of the alleged destruction of 

 Anopheles in the vicinity of a bat roost near San Antonio. Tex. 

 Further definite information on the life history and general habits 

 of bats is still in demand from entomologists and officials in charge 

 of health administration and general education. 



The available information on the bats of Xorth America would 

 fill a large volume, for scattered from Panama and the Antilles to 

 Alaska and Labrador there are about 260 species and subspecies be- 

 longing to 77 genera and 8 different families. Some of the tropical 

 species are blood-sucking vampires and others are fruit-eaters, but 

 nearly all the bats of the United Stat<>> and farther north are 

 insectivorous. Still the habits of the different species often differ 

 as widely as do their structure, appearance, and range, and the useful 



1 Reprinted also in Public Health Reports, vol. .35, no. 31, pp. 17S9-1795, July 30, 1020 

 (Reprint No. 715). 



71736°— 26 1 



