This month, microbats are featured.
Goulburn Broken CMA project officer Janice Mentiplay-Smith said the fast and furious microbats darted through the night sky, leaving their roosts at dusk to pursue their insect-based dinner.
“In a single night, microbats can eat at least one-third of their body weight and mosquitoes feature strongly on the menu,” Ms Mentiplay-Smith said.
“Multiply this by many, many thousands of microbats and it’s not difficult to see how these tiny flying mammals provide a valuable pest control service.”
Twelve species of microbat call the Goulburn Broken catchment’s Grey Box Grassy Woodlands home.
Microbats are placental mammals and not marsupials, meaning they don’t have a pouch and give birth to fully developed young. There are more than 60 species of microbat in Australia.
Microbat babies are called pups and are born in late spring. They feed on their mother’s milk until mid-summer.
At birth, the pups are about one-third the size of their mother, the equivalent of a human giving birth to a 20kg baby.
“These tiny mammals weigh between three and 150 grams, depending on the species,” Ms Mentiplay-Smith said.
“All microbats use echolocation ‘pulses’ to locate and gauge the distance between themselves and other objects, including prey.
“They emit a sound and listen for it as it bounces back.
“The time taken for the pulse to return indicates the location of the object.
“Normally, a microbat emits about 10 pulses per second, but when an insect is detected, these increase to more than 100 pulses per second.”
Microbats roost in tree hollows, behind pieces of bark and in caves.
Dead trees are crucial for microbats, as they contain plenty of roosting places.
Even small dead trees of just 20cm in diameter are extremely valuable.
The lack of tree hollows in the landscape means microbats need to roost in cracks in fenceposts, stormwater pipes, culverts and within houses, as well as shed roofs and walls.
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