Abstract
This paper is a bibliographical survey of records of bat parasites in France (including Corsica) between 1762 and 2018. In total, 237 scientific publications were analysed. They show that bats are infected with a large diversity of endoparasites and ectoparasites. A total of 113 parasite taxa were identified from 27 host species; in addition, six bats were not identified to the species-level. The helminth fauna of bats comprises three species of Cestoda, 15 of Trematoda, and 13 of Nematoda. Acari parasites include 53 species (in addition to 22 invalid species). Finally, insect parasites comprise 13 species of Diptera (bat flies), 12 of Siphonaptera (fleas), 3 of Hemiptera (bugs), and 1 Anoplura species. Bat taxa reported with parasites were Barbastella barbastellus, Eptesicus serotinus, Hypsugo savii, Miniopterus schreibersii, Myotis bechsteinii, M. blythii, M. capaccinii, M. dasycneme, M. daubentonii, M. emarginatus, M. myotis, M. mystacinus, M. nattereri, M. punicus, Nyctalus lasiopterus, N. leisleri, N. noctula, Pipistrellus kuhlii, P. nathusii, P. pipistrellus, Plecotus auritus, P. austriacus, Rhinolophus euryale, R. ferrumequinum, R. hipposideros, R. mehelyi, Tadarida teniotis, Eptesicus sp., Myotis sp., Pipistrellus sp., Plecotus sp., Rhinolophus sp. and the species complex Pipistrellus pipistrellus/kuhlii/nathusii. As regards E. nilssonii, Vespertilio murinus (Particoloured Bat), M. alcathoe, M. escalerai, P. macrobullaris and P. pygmaeus, no records were found. These published field data originated from 72 of the 96 departments in metropolitan France. The most commonly cited were Ardèche, Ariège, Bouches-du-Rhône, Haute-Savoie, Maine-et-Loire, Moselle, Meurthe-et-Moselle, Pyrénées-Orientales, Sarthe, Haute-Corse and Corse-du-Sud.
Highlights
Bats (Mammalia: Chiroptera) represent the second-most diverse order of mammals, after rodents
Many aspects of the ecology of bats are under study. One of these aspects is the study of bat parasites, which has a long history in Europe, for instance in French-speaking areas (France, Belgium)
I checked all available publications on each of the searched terms including a combination of France or the name of administrative departments (n = 111) or the names of former administrative regions of France (n = 22) with one of the generic names of the bat parasites, as mentioned in I parassiti dei pipistrelli (Mammalia, Chiroptera) della fauna italiana [167], Parasite diversity of European Myotis species with special emphasis on Myotis myotis (Microchiroptera, Vespertilionidae) from a typical nursery roost [121], Les puces de France et du basin méditerranéen occidental [37], and Checklist of host associations of European bat flies (Diptera: Nycteribiidae, Streblidae) [237]
Summary
Bats (Mammalia: Chiroptera) represent the second-most diverse order of mammals, after rodents. Many aspects of the ecology of bats are under study (e.g. swarming, hunting sites, flight routes, habitat studies, acoustic ecology). One of these aspects is the study of bat parasites, which has a long history in Europe, for instance in French-speaking areas (France, Belgium). In addition to the high diversity of bat parasites, these findings point out the predominant share, in the published records, of metazoan parasites. They point out the issue of diseases in bats and the issue of bat parasites as disease vectors for their hosts. Some bat parasites (e.g. bat flies) are known to be disease vectors for their hosts [83, 129, 181, 184, 192, 261]
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