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Is tissue maturation necessary for flight? Changes in body composition during postnatal development in the big brown bat

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Abstract

Patterns of offspring development reflect the availability of energy and nutrients, limitations on an individual’s capacity to use available resources, and tradeoffs between the use of nutrients to support current metabolic demands and tissue growth. To determine if the long period of offspring dependency in bats is associated with the need for an advanced state of tissue maturation prior to flight, we examined body composition during postnatal growth in the big brown bat, Eptesicus fuscus. Despite their large size at birth (22% of maternal mass), newborn bats are relatively immature, containing 82% body water in fat-free mass. However, the total body water content of newborn bat pups decreases to near-adult levels in advance of weaning, while concentrations of total body fat and protein exceed adult values. In contrast to many other mammals, postnatal growth of bat pups was characterized by relatively stable concentrations of calcium and phosphorus, but declining concentrations of magnesium. These levels remained stable or rebounded in late postnatal development. This casts doubt on the hypothesis that low rates of mineral transfer necessitate an extended lactation period in bats. However, our finding of near-adult body composition at weaning is consistent with the hypothesis that extended lactation in bats is necessary for the young to achieve sufficient tissue maturity to undertake the active flight necessary for independent feeding. In this respect, bats differ from most other mammals but resemble birds that must engage in active flight to achieve nutritional independence.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the A. Husk and C. Zahn families for access to their barns for bat collection. K. Jung assisted in the field and D. Hellinga, K. Flickinger, L. Nelson and M. Jakubasz assisted in the Nutrition Laboratory. Regina Eisert, Christina Booher, Geoff Hill, participants in the Hill/Hood labs, and three anonymous reviewers made valuable comments contributing to the final form of this manuscript. A National Institutes of Child Health and Development Grant (5-T32HD078387) to I.P. Callard helped support this project in the final year of analysis. W. Hood thanks the Smithsonian Office of Fellowships for a Graduate Student Research Fellowship. Additional support was provided by Boston University’s Center for Ecology and Conservation Biology.

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  1. Wendy R. Hood

    Present address: Department of Biological Sciences, Auburn University, 101 Life Sciences Building, Auburn, AL, 36849, USA

  2. Olav T. Oftedal

    Present address: Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Edgewater, MD, 21037, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Ecology and Conservation Biology, Department of Biology, Boston University, Boston, MA, 02215, USA

    Wendy R. Hood & Thomas H. Kunz

  2. National Zoological Park, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 20008, USA

    Olav T. Oftedal

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  1. Wendy R. Hood
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Correspondence to Wendy R. Hood.

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Communicated by I.D. Hume.

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Hood, W.R., Oftedal, O.T. & Kunz, T.H. Is tissue maturation necessary for flight? Changes in body composition during postnatal development in the big brown bat. J Comp Physiol B 181, 423–435 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00360-010-0521-7

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