The Data

The Database catalogs accounts of the interactions of bats with other organisms worldwide that are published in peer-reviewed literature. For each interaction we include the taxonomic information (family, genus, and species) of each member of the interaction, the type of interaction (pollination, visitation, consumption, host, etc.), the details of the location (country, habitat type, elevation, GPS), and citation (authors, title, journal, year). See Conceptual Data Map below. The number of interactions in the database will continue to grow as we make every effort to keep this information up-to-date.

Caveats

• This database contains accounts of bats interacting with other organisms, not hypotheses that they might (e.g. a flower has chiropterophilous features).
• The database reports interactions that have been published in peer-reviewed journals or theses/dissertations. It does not include unpublished data or personal observations that have not been published.
• In assigning interaction types, we do not assume that every visit to a flower results in pollination or that every fruit eaten results in seed dispersal (see list of interaction types for details). We do assume that every object that is “consumed” is destroyed in the process.
• The database does not determine the “quality” of the service provided by bats. For example, it does not report how far bats are moving seeds, if the seeds are mature when dispersed, or if seeds are dropped at location suitable for germination.
• It should not be assumed that a report of a bat interaction with an organism in one region of the world means that this bat (or another bat species) will have the same or any interaction with the organism in another region.
• Taxonomy: The scientific names of the bats are updated periodically to the current standard following www.batnames.org. Plant species are assigned to family using taxonomy on www.tropicos.org and some antiquated bat genus/species names have been updated. For both bats and plants, the name as originally published, if different from the currently accepted name, is noted in the Comments field. Scientific names and taxonomy of other organisms follow that found in the original publication.
  
• There is no correlation between the number of times a unique interaction is reported in the database and the strength of the interaction. For example, if Carollia perspicillata has been reported dispersing the seeds of Piper amalago in 10 publications, this does not mean that there is a stronger relationship between this bat and this plant than others, only that it has been witnessed and published more often.
• We try to incorporate only publications that report their own data and, in the limited instances where the data were taken from other studies, we note that these interactions were reported from a “secondary” source (Secondary tag) so as not to overpopulate the database by repeating interactions that have already been reported by their primary source. If this is important to the user, we suggest checking the individual publications to determine if the data have been reported in other studies by the same authors.