New research is reshaping scientists' understanding of bat evolution, with evidence suggesting that bats most likely originated in Europe during the late Paleocene, roughly 65 to 60 million years ago. For decades, researchers have debated where bats first appeared. Africa, Asia, and North America have all been proposed as possible birthplaces.
Now, an international team of 137 researchers from 64 countries has combined genomic data from every living bat family with evidence from ancient fossils to reconstruct the evolutionary history of the world's only mammals capable of true powered flight. The work was carried out through the Bat1K consortium, a global effort dedicated to sequencing the genomes of all living bat species and co-founded by UCD Professor Emma Teeling. The study, published in Nature, examined 103 bat genomes, including 42 newly generated chromosome-level assemblies, covering all 21 recognized bat families.
Researchers also incorporated evidence from 44 fossil bats. Together, those data gave scientists a much clearer picture of how bats emerged and spread around the planet. The results suggest that bats first evolved in Europe during the late Paleocene.
Their descendants then moved into Africa. As bats continued to diversify, separate groups expanded into the Americas, Asia, and Australia. Over time, those migrations produced the major bat lineages found around the world today.
Bats are among the most distinctive mammals on Earth. They are the only mammals capable of sustained powered flight, and most species can navigate and hunt in darkness using sound. They also represent about one fifth of all living mammals and play important ecological roles around the world.
Many bat species are unusually resistant to disease and can live far longer than other mammals of similar size. Even so, scientists have spent decades trying to resolve basic questions about how bats evolved and how their most unusual traits developed. "It is extraordinary, after decades of research and conflicting findings, we finally have a robust phylogenetic tree that we can now use to properly understand how and where bats' unique traits evolved," said leading senior author and co-founding Director of Bat1K Professor Emma Teeling, UCD School of Biology and Environmental Science.
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