Bats of Southern Africa

Peter John Taylor
University of Natal Press, Pietermaritzburg, 2000
212 pages, 200x133mm,
ISBN 0 86980 982 2

This is very definitely a book about bats! Subtitled "a guide to biology, identification and conservation", Peter John Taylor's Bats of Southern Africa covers all of these aspects, and more, in three separate sections. The first section describes the importance of bats and, after dealing with the plethora of bat myth and legend, covers the biology of the mega- and micro-chiroptera.

Bat adaptation and specialisation such as echolocation and feeding behaviour, migration, torpor and hibernation, reproduction (such as sperm storage and other ingenious mechanisms), anatomy and ecological/economic significance are covered in this section. Section two deals with the identification of the 74 bat species recorded in the region and for this employs a key. Unfortunately, the key is not really of use to the casual observer and for the most part necessitates the examination of a museum, or other, specimen.

The species accounts also appear in this section and include distribution maps and specific information such as diet, habitat, call and so on. Here I felt the clutter of the layout could be improved somewhat by placing the accounts of the different species on separate pages and also by separating the different families and sub-families more distinctly. The inclusion of plates might also have been more illuminating as to the difference between particular species and families. Section three goes into some detail on some of the threats to bat populations, bat conservation organisations, bat observation techniques and gives contact numbers for interested readers.

All in all, this is a ground-breaking book that has plugged a previously glaring gap in Southern Africa's accessible natural history literature. It deserves further investigation by those interested in these nocturnal denizens of the second most diverse order of mammals.

-Chris Roche-

Posted: Birds by CC Africa, Date: 22 November 2006