According to a team of researchers from the American Museum of Natural History and the University of Florida (USA), the bats of the Caribbean resisted the climate change of about 10,000 years ago. , contrary to what was thought until now.
Several thousand years ago, the Caribbean islands were home to 77 species of non-flying land mammals , such as sloths, monkeys or insectivores. But today, the only group of native mammals left are bats. During the end of the last glacial period, most mammals (almost 80%) became extinct in that region of the world, but among bats the number of extinctions was much lower: they only affected 18% of species.
That is why they are now the group of mammals with the greatest diversity of species on these islands , according to the scientist of the American Museum of Natural History J. Ángel Soto-Centeno. The work of this researcher, together with David W. Steadman, which was published in Scientific Reports , reveals that some species resisted the changes and persisted between 5,000 and 7,000 years after that glacial period.
They first determined the age of the animals using the radio-carbon isotope technique. Second, they used a method to develop climate models that predicted the currently available habitat for each species geographically. Finally, they compared the model projections of the past with the present in order to know if the distribution of each species has changed over time.
Combining fossils with climate models has made it possible to study bat extinctions in great detail . Using fossils, the researchers discovered that the oldest extinction event occurred about 4,000 years ago, while other species survived until 2,000 years ago.
The results of both methods indicate that it is unlikely that the bat extinctions in the Caribbean were a consequence of the climate change that occurred at the end of the last ice age, 10,000 years ago, as previously thought.
