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The grey-headed flying fox, Pteropus poliocephalus, is a fruitbat native to Australia. Members of the genus Pteropus include the largest bats in the world. The Pteropus genus has currently about 57 recognised species. Pteropus is primarily an island taxon, with 55 species having some or all of their distribution on islands. Only nine species are found in continental areas (five in Asia and four in Australia), and only two (Lyle's flying fox Pteropus lylei and the grey-headed flying fox) are restricted to continents.
[edit] Physical characteristicsAdult grey-headed flying foxes have an average wingspan of over 1m and can weigh up to 1 kg. They are brown, with varying shades of grey on their head and back, and have an orange/brown mantle that fully encircles their neck. [edit] DistributionThe Australian mainland is home to 56 species of bat. Of these, four species belong to the genus Pteropus: the little red flying fox, Pteropus scapulatus, the spectacled flying-fox, Pteropus conspicillatus, the black flying-fox, Pteropus alecto and the grey-headed flying-fox. The grey-headed flying fox is endemic to the south-eastern forested areas of Australia, principally east of the Great Dividing Range. It extends from Bundaberg in southern Queensland to Geelong, Victoria, where it occupies a more extreme latitude than any other Pteropus species. [edit] Roosting habitsDuring the day individuals reside in large roosts (colonies or 'camps') consisting of hundreds to tens of thousands of individuals. Colonies are formed in seemingly arbitrary locations. Roost vegetation includes rainforest patches, stands of Melaleuca, mangroves and riparian vegetation, but roosts also occupy highly modified vegetation in urban areas. Grey-headed flying foxes exhibit a high seasonal fidelity to traditional roosts and return annually to the same locations. When undisturbed, roost locations can be stable for several decades and fidelity to some sites may even have pre-dated human settlement. An important determinant of roost size is food available within nightly foraging distances, commonly within 20 kilometres but up to 50 km. Another important determinant is the time of year, with the largest aggregations of individuals occurring during the mating season. [edit] ReproductionMatings are generally observed between March and May but the most likely time of conception is April. The majority of females reproduce once a year and give birth to a single young. Gestation is about 27 weeks and pregnant females give birth between late September and November. Late births in to January are sometimes observed. The young are born altricial and are dependent on their mothers for food and protection. Females carry their young for the first three weeks during their nightly foraging trips and after this time young are left in the roost at night. Young are capable of independent flight when they are appropriately 4 months old at which time they commence foraging outside the colony. Young are weaned when they are approximately 6 months old. [edit] Life-spanThe grey-headed flying fox is very long-lived for a mammal of its size. There are reports of individuals surviving in captivity for up to 23 years, and a maximum age of up to 15 years seems possible in the wild. [edit] DietAround dusk, grey-headed flying foxes leave the roost and travel up to 50 km a night to feed on pollen, nectar and fruit. The food sources utilised by the species include pollen and nectar from trees belonging to the genera Eucalyptus, Angophora, Melaleuca and Banksia, and fruits from a wide range of rainforest trees, including members of the Ficus genus. Grey-headed flying foxes, along with the three other Australian flying fox species, fulfill a very important ecological role by dispersing the pollen and seeds of a wide range of native Australian plants. The grey-headed flying fox is the only mammalian pollenivore, nectarivore and frugivore to occupy substantial areas of subtropical rainforests and so is of key importance to those forests. Most vegetation communities used by the grey-headed flying fox produce foraging resources in seasonal but annually irregular superabundant pulses, and the grey-headed flying fox has adopted complex migration traits in response to such ephemeral and patchy food resources. However, there are some temporally and spatially reliable resources restricted to a small number of coastal vegetation communities in northern New South Wales and Queensland that may support smaller resident populations. [edit] ConservationThe grey-headed flying fox is now a prominent federal conservation problem in Australia. Early last century the species was considered abundant with numbers estimated in the many millions. However, in recent years, direct evidence has been accumulating that the species is in serious decline. Current estimates for the species are about 300,000 and it has been suggested that the national population may have declined by as much as 30% in the last decade alone. Grey-headed flying foxes are exposed to several threatening processes, including loss of foraging and roosting habitat, competition with the black flying fox, and mass die-offs caused by extreme temperature events. When present in urban environments grey-headed flying foxes are sometimes perceived as a nuisance. Cultivated orchard fruits are also taken but apparently only at times when other food items are scarce. Because the roosting and foraging habits of the grey-headed flying fox bring the species into conflict with humans, the species suffers from direct killing of animals in orchards and harassment and destruction of roosts. Negative public perception of the species has intensified with the discovery of three recently emerged zoonotic viruses that are potentially fatal to humans: Hendra virus, Australian bat lyssavirus and Menangle virus. However, only Australian bat lyssavirus is known from two isolated cases to be directly transmissible from bats to humans. Recent research has shown that since 1994, more than 24,500 grey-headed flying foxes have died from extreme heat events alone. This is of increasing concern for the survival of this species now that climate models predict significant increases in the intensity, duration and frequency of such temperature extremes. To answer some of the growing threats, roost sites have been legally protected since 1986 in New South Wales and since 1994 in Queensland. In 1999 the species was classified as ‘Vulnerable to extinction’ in The Action Plan for Australian Bats[1], and has since been protected across its range under Australian federal law. As of 2008 the species is listed as 'Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. [edit] Wildlife rescueBat carers are not only specially trained in techniques to rescue and rehabilitate bats, they are also vaccinated against rabies. Although the chance of contracting the rabies-like Australian bat lyssavirus is extremely small, bat carers are inoculated for their own protection. Flying foxes often come to the attention of Australian wildlife care and rescue organisations such as Wildcare Australia, ONARR, Wildlife Carers Darling Downs, Bat Care, Bat Rescue, Tweed Valley Wildlife Carers, WIRES and Wildlife Victoria when reported as injured, sick, orphaned or abandoned. A very high proportion of adult flying fox injuries are caused by entanglement in barbed wire fences or loose, improperly erected fruit tree netting, both of which can result in very serious injuries and a slow, agonizing death for the animal if not rescued quickly. Baby flying foxes usually come into care after having been separated from the mother. Babies are often orphaned during 4 to 6 weeks of age when they inadvertently fall off the mother during flight. When they are older, orphans usually come into care because of parental death from powerline electrocution or barbed wire entanglement. A rare, but apparent natural, occurrence of mass abandonment can lead to the rescue of hundreds of babies at one time. The latter most recently occurred in November 2008 at the Canungra bat camp in South East Queensland when Wildcare Australia, working closely with the EPA and regional bat care groups, rescued and rehabilitated over 300 baby Grey-headed Flying-foxes. Most babies are in a dehydrated and distressed state by the time they are rescued, and some are infested with maggots if found sick or injured. A young flying fox must be fed every 4 hours up to 6 times a day, and then as it grows it is introduced to blossoms and fruit. When the young flying fox is fully weaned around 10 to 12 weeks of age, it goes into a crèche for rehabilitation and eventual release. [edit] Gallery
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