Free Discovery Lecture - The Marine Bat of Baja California

The Marine Bat of Baja California (Myotis vivesi)
by Dr. Brad Blood, Psomas

to join us before the lecture for a special members-only reception with the speaker!

There are over 1,400 species of bats worldwide. Bats, order Chiroptera, are the only mammals capable of powered flight. Within the order Chiroptera there are numerous feeding specializations including insects, nectar and pollen, blood, leaves, and other animals. There are even bats who specialize in eating spiders off the spider’s web! One of the rarest food preferences found in the Chiroptera is fish-eating. Myotis vivesi is a fish-eating bat that lives on islands in Sea of Cotez, coastal Sonora and the Pacific coast of Baja California. This lecture will describe the natural history of this unique species and its adaptations to fish (and shrimp)-eating and to the marine environment.

Brad R. Blood is a senior biologist at Psomas and a Research Associate in Mammalogy at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. His Ph.D. thesis was on the evolution of fish-catching in bats, an ecomorphological study on convergent adaptations to a unique feeding strategy. Most recently he has published a Guide to the Terrestrial Mammals of Southern California and the Eastern and Southern Sierra Nevada.

Bat photo credit: B. J. Hayward, Courtesy of the American Society of Mammalogist Mammal Image Library

Host or Publisher Cabrillo Marine Aquarium