Abstract
The Mauritius fruit bat (Pteropus niger) has been the subject of repeated culling campaigns, apparently in response to pressure from the fruit-growing industry concerned over damage to commercially valuable orchard crops such as lychees. More than 31,000 fruit-bearing lychee trees also exist in private backyards, making this an issue pertinent to a wide cross-section of the Mauritian general public and not just those involved in commercial fruit production. The level of damage caused by bats to fruit crops is often debated and the low number of robust damage assessment studies hampers mitigation efforts. During the fruiting season of 2016/2017, we assessed the damage among backyard lychee trees attributable to fruit bats and other causes around Vacoas-Phoenix, Central Mauritius and evaluated the impact of using protective netting as a mitigation strategy. Fruit yield from panicles that were protected from depredation by nylon netting was approximately one third greater than that from unprotected panicles. We suspect that fruit bats were responsible for approximately 42% of the total damage but illustrate the difficulties in attributing damage to a single cause in such assessments. Although we demonstrate the value of protective netting, we recognize that barriers to implementation exist and that a more holistic approach that incorporates crop protection, forest restoration strategies and addresses negative public attitudes towards bats in general is required to ensure the persistence of this endemic species.
Highlights
Fruit-bats (Pteropodidae) are recognised as important for the maintenance of healthy ecosystems and the provision of vital ecosystem services [1,2,3]
To quantify damage caused by fruit bats to lychee fruit we adopted and modified the method described by Tillman et al, [33] that was originally developed to measure the extent of damage to fruit trees in Florida caused by birds
A total of 20 lychee trees were assessed. Two of these were removed from the analyses due to extensive damage apparently caused by monkeys (Macaca fascicularis), no other trees were affected
Summary
Fruit-bats (Pteropodidae) are recognised as important for the maintenance of healthy ecosystems and the provision of vital ecosystem services [1,2,3] They have been implicated in the proliferation of at least 289 plant species and at least 186 of these are known to provide extrinsic human benefits including timber, food and medicine [4,5]. 50% of all pteropodid species are hunted for food [7] which contributes to their decline in many countries [8,9] Where they threaten economically valuable fruit crops, fruit-bats are often shot or trapped in nets by fruit growers [10,11]. This persecution is perhaps compounded by widelyheld negative attitudes among people toward bat species in general, associated with fear, disdain and disease [12,13,14,15]
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