Abstract
Living organisms today face conservation challenges as never before. Anthropogenic pollution, climate change and habitat modifications combine to exert strong pressures on species survival. This is especially the case for bats due to their slow rate of reproduction, high metabolism and longevity. Bats account for ~20% of mammalian diversity and play a key role in ecosystem services by controlling pests and disease vectors, pollinating crops, and dispersing seeds.
Molecular markers have the potential to powerfully inform and assess conservation measures in a number of ways. Typically the methods used borrow heavily from population and landscape genetics as well as phylogeography and phylogenetics. Several of the areas where conservation genetic methods have proved informative in bat studies are discussed using a selection of case studies in: phylogeography, designations of Evolutionarily Significant Units (ESUs), taxonomy and species delimitation, connectivity assessments, non-invasive genetics (population size estimates, rare species identification), and the study of swarming siteshotspots of geneflow and potentially hybridization.
The future directions and needs for conservation genetic studies in bats are discussed and will hopefully include greater utilisation of high-throughput techniques due to methodological improvements and greater cost efficiency. This in turn should enable broader applications for non-invasive genetics, which have clear benefits for conservation studies. Finally, a need for better communication and utilisation of genetic results in conservation policy is needed as well as follow-up assessments of any measures taken.