Conservation Magazine

A publication of the Society for Conservation Biology

CURRENT ISSUE >>

Conservation in the Classroom
Free Teaching Tools

Innovations

Cheap Labor

By Nancy Bazilchuk
July-September 2007 (Vol. 8, No. 3)

Brazilian researchers have found an unusual way to reforest hundreds of thousands of hectares of denuded Atlantic and Amazonian forests. They are luring fruit bats into fruit-free cleared areas by impregnating fake fruits with essential oils of the bat’s favored foods. When the bats fly to investigate the aromatic foam-rubber fruits, they defecate a rain of seeds from the fruits they’ve already eaten, like flying Johnny Appleseeds.

“Frugivorous bats are natural and efficient seed dispersers, and they provide this service for no cost at all,” says zoologist Sandra Bos Mikich, from the Ecology Laboratory of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa Florestas).

TO READ MORE, log in below.

Current subscribers log in here
for access to this article and the entire archive

Not a subscriber yet?

Subscribe Now >> and gain instant access to this article as well as the entire archive

Just not sure? Try a 1 month free online trial >>