Non-kin adoption in the common vampire bat

Abstract

Individual animals across many different species occasionally ‘adopt’ unrelated, orphaned offspring. Although adoption may be best explained as a by-product of adaptive traits that enhance parental care or promote the development of parental skills, one factor that is possibly important for the likelihood of adoption is the history of cooperative interactions between the mother, adopted offspring and adopter. Using 652 h of behavioural samples collected over four months, we describe patterns of allogrooming and food sharing before and after an instance of non-kin adoption between two adult female common vampire bats ( Desmodus rotundus ) that were captured from distant sites (340 km apart) and introduced to one another in captivity. The first female died from an illness 19 days after giving birth. The second female groomed and regurgitated food to the mother more often than any other group member, then groomed, nursed and regurgitated food to the orphaned, female pup. The substantial increase in alloparental care by this female after the mother's death was not observed among the 20 other adult females that were present in the colony. Our findings corroborate previous reports of non-kin adoption in common vampire bats and are consistent with the hypothesis that non-kin adoption can be motivated, in part, by a history of cooperative interactions.

Co‐option and the evolution of food sharing in vampire bats

“…Errors bars are bootstrapped 95% confidence intervals. Data from Carter et al, (2019) non-reproductive female (Razik et al, 2021;Schmidt et al, 1980). In one case from my lab, the adopting female was unrelated and previously unfamiliar to the mother.…”

Gene losses in the common vampire bat illuminate molecular adaptations to blood feeding

“…The loss of CYP39A1 (cytochrome P450 family 39 subfamily A member 1) could have contributed to the evolution of vampire bat's exceptional social behaviors and cognitive abilities 20,100,101 . CYP39A1 encodes an oxysterol 7-α-hydroxylase enzyme 102 .…”

Social convergence of gut microbiomes in vampire bats

“…We captured all bats from three distant wild roosts (120–340 km apart): six adult females, one juvenile female and two juvenile males from a cave at Lake Bayano, Panamá, 10 adult females from a hollow tree in Tolé, Panamá (including one bat that was not part of the merged colony) and eight adult females from a hollow tree in La Chorrera, Panamá. We then housed these bats together in an outdoor flight cage for four months as described previously [ 19 ]. We opportunistically took 85 faecal samples from isolated bats from 19 May 2019 to 16 October 2019.…”

“…In the merged colony, we recorded clustering and oral contact from video recorded by three infrared surveillance cameras (Foscam NVR Security System) for 6 h each day from 23 June 2019 to 4 August 2019, and from 11 August 2019 to 14 October 2019 (a total of 640 sampled hours), as described previously [ 19 ]. To measure clustering, all bats that were roosting in a contiguous group at the start of each half-hour were scored as associated.…”