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The Status of Fruit Bats on Guam
|Title:||The Status of Fruit Bats on Guam|
|Authors:||Wiles, Gary J.|
|Publisher:||University of Hawaii Press|
|Citation:||Wiles GJ. 1987. The status of fruit bats on Guam. Pac Sci 41: 148-157.|
|Abstract:||Two species of fruit bats are known from Guam in the southern
Mariana Islands. Pteropus mariannus mariannus has declined greatly in abundance
since the early 1900s. Its numbers decreased from an estimated 3,000
animals in 1958 to fewer than 50 individuals in 1978. However, by 1982, the
population of this species increased to about 850 to 1,000 bats, probably through
immigration of fruit bats to Guam from the island of Rota. Since then , P. m.
mariannus appears to be declining once again with only 425 to 500 counted
during a February-April 1984 census . A second smaller species, P. tokudae, has
always been rare since it was first discovered in the early 1930s. It has not been
recorded since 1968 and now is thought to be extinct. Overhunting of Pteropus
for use as a delicacy is the main cause for their decline on Guam. Forest clearing
and predation by brown tree snakes may be other contributing factors. Both
species of Pteropus were listed as endangered on Guam by the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service in August 1984.
|Appears in Collections:||Pacific Science Volume 41, Numbers 1-4, 1987|
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