Social
Spacing of Desmodus rotundus
The social spacing of the vampire
bat is tied in with its social organization. The social structure of the
vampire bat centers on the femal (Kunz and Pierson 1994). These small female
groups (along with their offspring) have nonoverlapping foraging ranges seperate
from other groups (Kunz and Pierson 1994). Females roost together in order to
share a good microhabitat, to avoid predation on their offspring, to remove parasites
from each other, but primarily to share blood meals and allogroom (Wilkinson 1985).
Vampire bats have home ranges, with male and female homeranges being relatively
the same size. These home ranges are relatively small in comparison to other
species of bats (Fleming 1972). This goes along with them roosting nearby
where they feed so as to reduce distances to fly while feeding. The advantages
of roosting nearby the food source would be a decreased distance to fly after
feeding while the vampire bat is swollen with food and barely able to fly.
The social spacing is related to the distribution of food.
The food is patchy yet so abundant that it would not be feasible for the
vampire bat to mark out any type of territory and defend the food from
other vampire bats. There is no need to expend the energy to attempt
that type of territoriality when there is plenty of food to go around.
There is no predation on the vampire bats resulting in any type of predation
pressure . The small amounts of predation are solely limited to farmers
attempting to kill the bats so as to protect their livestock. Therefore,
the homerange is the most logical social spacing unit. The vampire
bats have their distinct area that they occupy (Fleming 1972). The
overlapping would most likely only occur at the feeding sites. However,
the large size of the prey and the small size of the vampire enables many
vampires to feed on the same animal and yet not have to interact with one
another. This is most likely why they exhibit a sort of territoriality
while feeding, they can defend their individual bites from other vampires
relatively easily and with little expenditure of energy. Roosts are
limited and so the smaller subunits will roost together in large groups.
There is little aggression between the females for roost space and they
seem to not mind to roost side by side with other female groups (Campanha
and Fowler 1993). The aggression between males is related to mating.
Click below on social relationships for more insight into the mating system
of vampire bats.
This web page was created for Dr. Verna Case's Animal Behavior
class at Davidson College. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns
please feel free to email Dr. Verna Case,
or visit the Animal
Behavior Webpage. Thanks for visiting my site, come back soon!
