Jamaican Flower Bat :: Phyllonycteris aphylla

Bad at Goodbyes :: Episode 087

On today’s show we learn about the Jamaican Flower Bat, a critically endangered flying mammal native to the Caribbean island nation of Jamaica. Its scientific name is Phyllonycteris aphylla and it was first described in 1898.

For more information about Jamaica Flower Bat conservation and bat conservation in general please see Bat Conservation International at https://www.batcon.org.

• (00:05) Intro
• (02:05) Species Information
• (27:22) Citations
• (29:29) Music
• (36:42) Pledge

Research for today’s show was compiled from:

• Baker, R. J., Groen, J. A., & Owen, R. D. (1984). Field key to Antillean bats (Occasional Papers, No. 94). Museum of Texas Tech University. – https://ttu-ir.tdl.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/d15e93d9-80de-45dc-95b8-3af88073278b/content
• Bat Conservation International. (2022, May 20). Globally significant Jamaican cave permanently protected to save critically endangered bats [Press release]. https://www.batcon.org/press/globally-significant-jamaican-cave-permanently-protected-to-save-critically-endangered-bats/
• Carstens, B. C. (2001). Phylogeny of the neotropical nectar-feeding bats (Chiroptera: Phyllostomidae) (Publication No. 1403850) Master's thesis, Michigan State University. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. https://www.proquest.com/openview/5e2c8907b5a92b9a86606531d3c6b86b/1
• Genoways, Hugh H., Baker, Robert J., Bickham, John W., & Phillips, Carleton J. (2005). Bats of Jamaica. Bats of Jamaica, 48, 1--155. – https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/part/249897
• iNaturalist – near Rock Spring Caverns, St. Mary, Jamaica
• Koenig, S. & Davalos, L. 2015. Phyllonycteris aphylla. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2015: e.T17173A22133396. – https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2015-4.RLTS.T17173A22133396.en
• McFarlane, D. A. (1986). Cave bats in Jamaica. Oryx, 20(1), 27-30. – https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605300025874
• Miller, G. S., Jr. (1898). Descriptions of five new phyllostome bats. Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 50, 326–337. – https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/1647828
• Oelbaum, P. J., Hall, R. P., Whyte, D. L., Stewart, R. S., Pauel, J., Kouwenberg, S., … Welch, K. C. (2024). Reproductive populations of the Critically Endangered bat Phyllonycteris aphylla at two new locations in Jamaica. Oryx, 58(5), 650–654. – https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605323001643
• National Environment and Planning Agency. (2011). 2012 - 2017 bat management plan for Jamaica. – https://www.cockpitcountry.com/pdfs/NEPA%20Bat%20Mgt%20Plan_2012-2017.pdf
• Pallardy, R. (2024, August 27). "We found 20 pairs of wings in an hour.” Culprit of Jamaica's dismembered bats caught on camera. Discover Wildlife. – https://www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts/feral-cats-catching-bats-jamaica
• Sears, K. E., Behringer, R. R., Rasweiler, J. J., & Niswander, L. A. (2006). Development of bat flight: Morphologic and molecular evolution of bat wing digits. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 103(17), 6581–6586. – https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0509716103
• Wilson, D., Tikuye, B. G., Tefera, G. W., & Ray, R. L. (2025). Impact of bauxite mining on vegetation health in Jamaica: NDVI and aerosol optical depth analysis using remote sensing. Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Parts A/B/C, 140, 104058. – https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pce.2025.104058
• Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaican_flower_bat

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A note on accuracy: I strive for it! These episodes are well-researched and built from scholarly sources, hoping to provide an informed and accurate portrait of these species. That said, I’m a musician! I am not an academic and have limited scientific background. I may get things wrong! If you are using this podcast for scholarship of any kind, please see the cited sources and double-check all information.

Welcome to Bad at Goodbyes.

On today’s show we consider the Jamaican Flower Bat.

The Jamaican Flower Bat is a critically endangered flying mammal native to the Caribbean island nation of Jamaica. Its scientific name is Phyllonycteris aphylla and it was first described in 1898.

The Jamaican Flower Bat is a medium-sized New World leaf-nosed bat, with a body length of about 3 inches, weighing just half an ounce (that's 1/32rd of a pound), with a roughly one foot wingspan. Bats are the only mammal adapted for flying, and do so via highly specialized skeletal and muscular adaptations.

That said, a bat's wing is basically the exact same skeletal parts found in a human arm and hand. Through millions of years of evolution (we have bat fossil from roughly 50 million years ago), specific bones elongated, shrank, or fused together to allow for muscle-powered flight. Bats have shoulder and upper arms much like our own though their shoulder joint restricts movement to just up and downstrokes (instead of a full radius). Their collarbone is particularly robust; it anchors the bats large pectoral muscles, needed for flapping. The humerus (the upper arm bone) is short and thick. With their forearm, the radius and ulna are elongated, thickened, and fused to prevent the wing from twisting and to support the strength needed for flapping. And then the metacarpals and phalanges, the hand and fingers, are highly specialized: the thumb is short and clawed and the other four digits are significantly lengthened to provide the skeletal structure to support the plagiopatagium, that's the wing membrane. To compare the relative proportions if an average adult human had bat hands, they'd have fingers roughly four feet long.

The Jamaican Flower Bat's hindlimbs are also specialized, their knees point backward and bend forward, allowing the bat to stretch the wing membrane into a kind of cup shape used to slow down (a bit like a parachute) or make quick turns, (like a sail or rudder). Related the rotated leg bones aid in upside down hanging, keeping their center of gravity aligned with their feet.

The Jamaican Flower Bat's fur is short and blonde or light-golden brown that often fades to white on their belly. Their wings are black and their forearms, digits, and legs are a pink fleshy color.

They have large ears, roughly two-thirds of an inch in length, small black eyes, and a somewhat elongated face, with a disc-shaped nose, that looks a lot like a pig's snout.

This is an adaptation related to echolocation. So, an echolocating animal (like some whale, dolphin, a few birds, and of course most bats) emit a sound. Those sound waves reflect off of objects, surfaces, other beings in their environment and the returning echoes are received and interpreted in the animal's brain to create a kind of mental map of their environment. The time, pitch, and timbre of these returning sound waves allows the species to hold a detailed sense of their surroundings, identifying what or whom, and to navigate and forage, in the dark.

In the case of the Jamaican Flower Bat, they echolocate, nasally, from their nose, emitting high-frequency sound waves out through their nostrils. This is key because it allows the bat to feed while continuing to echolocate. If these sounds emitted from say their mouth, that would interrupt their sense of their environment every time they ate.

The Jamaican Flower Bat is nectivorous, they feed on the nectar and pollen of night-blooming flowers in their habitat. So, they'll use echolocation to generally find the blossom, and then use a combination of echolocation, scent sensing (of the flowers smell), and when close, visual identification: spying moonlit flower petals contrasted against dark foliage, to locate their food sources.

The Jamaican Flower Bat has a very long, specialized tongue, they push deep into a flower blossom and lap up the nectar. Incidental ingestion of pollen provides dietary protein and amino acids. And as they forage from individual plant to individual plant, often across a large range, they spread pollen caught in their fur, serving as a vital pollinator in their habitat.

The Jamaican Flower Bat is nocturnal, active at night. They roost and rest in caves during the day and then spend the nighttime actively foraging across flowering trees and shrubs of the Jamaican forest, returning home to their caves, before dawn.

Their cave roosts are highly social spaces. Colonies of dozens to hundreds of Jamaican Flower Bat gregariously cohabitating in chaotic, densely packed roosts, and often interspecifically so with other bat species. We've documented the Jamaican Flower Bat peacefully cohabitating, sharing cave roost sites, with the Jamaican Greater Funnel-eared Bat, Jamaican Fruit Bat, Buffy Flower Bat, Leach's Single-leaf Bat, and Macleay's Mustached Bat.

There is some remarkable evolutionary differentiation at play here. These other bat species all have distinct temperature preferences within the cave, have distinct diets, some eat fruit, some eat insects, some consume nectar, and they echolocate at distinct frequencies. So all can successfully overlap in this habitat with minimal food resource and roost site competition.

We have pretty limited information about Jamaican Flower Bat reproduction. We do know they'll breed twice a year, in January and June. And pregnant females separate from their colony, retreating deeper into the warmest parts of their cave in a sex-segregated temporary nursery colony - a congregation of expecting mothers and those who've recently birthed, and their new young. Mothers birth a single altricial pup, so they're born blind, hairless, and totally dependent on their mother's milk for sustenance. Pups develop in the nursery colony, in the safety of the deep dark warm cave, only emerging into the forest night when they've grown large enough and well-developed enough for independent flight and foraging.

————

In the dream,

To thrive in the warm wet dark,

Cozy among my kin

To sing into the nighttime

And fully fathom the echoing reply.

To feast at the flower,

To sip at the blossom,

And to fly, the yearn is always

To fly

In the dream.

————

The Jamaican Flower Bat is native to Jamaica, a roughly four thousand square mile island nation roughly 500 miles southeast of the North American mainland, in the Caribbean Sea.

We find Jamaican Flower Bat roost sites in 3-5 caves on the island's northern coast and central interior. Scientists have recently confirmed roosts in the Green Grotto Caves, Rock Spring Caverns, Stony Hill Cave, and historically at St. Clair Cave and Marta Tick Cave.

These are complex underground limestone structures, carved by millenia of watery chemical erosion. Limestone is primarily calcium carbonate. So, rainwater seeps through organic matter in the topsoil, forming a weak carbonic acid, and this slightly acidic groundwater, gets into the cracks, fractures, and crevasses of the limestone bedrock. The carbonic acid reacts with the calcium carbonate in the limestone, dissolving it and the flowing groundwater carries the material away, leaving small physical voids within the bedrock that eventually over time, over years and years of subtraction, become these underground cave networks of chambers, sinkholes, and underground rivers, that the Jamaican Flower Bat calls home.

These cave systems are a particular kind of microclimate, referred to in the literature, (this is the scientific terminology); they're referred to as "hot caves." Hot caves have narrow entrances and internal chambers that limit airflow and ventilation. The cave chambers are hot and wet, air temperature can exceed 100 °F, and relative humidity reaches above 90%. This heat is primarily biological, the result of the contained collective body heat radiating from the multi-species bat colonies that gets trapped within the low-ventilation cave chambers.

And this intense microclimate is a key aspect of the Jamaican Flower Bat's habitat: roosting where the ambient temperature matches or exceeds their own natural body temp, they do not have to burn calories to stay warm at rest. And new pups are protected from cold exposure, when their mothers leave the roost to forage.

These surface forage sites are lush tropical broadleaf forests that can see as much as 150 inches of rain per year.

The Jamaican Flower Bat shares its subterranean roost and nearby surface forest with:

Buffy Flower Bat, Jamaican Fruit Bat, Jamaican Greater Funnel-eared Bat, Leach's Single-leaf Bat, Macleay's Mustached Bat, Cane Toad, White-crowned Pigeon, White-winged Dove, Cinnamon Vine, Candelabra Bush, Jamaican Oriole, Northern Mockingbird, Common Passionfruit, Sad Flycatcher, Loggerhead Kingbird, Jamaican Laughing Frog, Stripefoot Anole, Western Honey Bee, White Peacock, Zebra Longwing, Common Passionfruit, Long-tailed Skipper, Snake Plant, Candelabra Bush, Orange-spotted Flower Moth, Sweet Clockvine, Hicatee Fig, Jamaican Satyr, Olive-throated Parakeet, Harlequin Moth, and many many more.

In the 20th century the Jamaican Flower Bat, was twice believed to be extinct, and in both cases researchers later observed new, previously undocumented roost colonies, confirming the species a continued, though perilous, existence.

Underregulated extraction of bat excrement (guano) for use as agricultural fertilizer also disturbs the bat's roost sites. The guano extraction process causes acoustic and physical disturbance, panicking bats who will abandon their roosts.

Human-introduced invasive predators, specifically: feral cats, also threaten the Jamaican Flower Bat population. Feral cats in the Jamaican wilderness have learned to prey at narrow cave entrances, taking easy meals and hunting bat for play.

Additionally human infrastructure expansions, particularly road construction and maintenance threatens bat cave roosts. For example, for decades, a road has run directly over the thin limestone roof of the Stony Hill Cave. The risk here is that heavy industrial vehicles or road repair work could fracture the cave's ceiling. Cooler outside air would flood the chamber, altering the microclimate by reducing the ambient air temperature with potentially fatal consequences for the bats who rely on high heat for metabolic regulation.

Our most recent counts estimate that less than 500 Jamaican Flower Bat remain in the wild.

Baker, R. J., Groen, J. A., & Owen, R. D. (1984). Field key to Antillean bats (Occasional Papers, No. 94). Museum of Texas Tech University. – https://ttu-ir.tdl.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/d15e93d9-80de-45dc-95b8-3af88073278b/content

iNaturalist – near Rock Spring Caverns, St. Mary, Jamaica

Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaican_flower_bat

For more information about Jamaica Flower Bat conservation and bat conservation in general please see Bat Conservation International at https://www.batcon.org

I honor the lives of all Jamaican Flower Bat. I will commit their name to my record. I am grateful to have shared time on our planet with this being. I lament the ways in which I and my species have harmed and diminished this species. I grieve.

And so, in the name of the Jamaican Flower Bat I pledge to reduce my consumption. And my carbon footprint. And curb my wastefulness. I pledge to acknowledge and attempt to address the costs of my actions and inactions. And I pledge to resist the harm of plant and animal kin and their habitat, by individuals, corporations, and governments.

I forever pledge my song to the witness and memory of all life, to a broad celebration of biodiversity, and to the total liberation of all beings.