WATCH: The role bats play in pollination and regeneration
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00:00Hi, I'm Dr. Tanya Bishop, one of the wildlife vets from WIRES.
00:03I'm here today at one of the flying fox colonies, here watching some grey-headed flying foxes and black flying foxes
00:11vying for the best real estate that's got the most sun for sunbake at the moment on this cold day. A little known fact in
00:17Australia is that our main pollinators and bush regenerators are in fact not birds and bees, which a lot of people might think, but they're actually
00:25our flying foxes. They're keystone species in Australia, which means our entire ecosystem depends on them.
00:33They are our main species that are responsible for pollinating our hardwoods as well as our Gondwana forests.
00:41Australia is such a harsh habitat that our eucalypts have got the fastest rate of genetic variance
00:46and that's solely due to flying foxes because they are long-distance pollinators,
00:52meaning that they can carry genetic information from long distances to another place, which allows our eucalypts and our forests
00:59to change, varying with our very harsh landscape and climate,
01:04but also to regenerate areas of bush that have been devastated.
01:08This is more important than ever right now after the Black Summer bushfires.
01:14We don't have the people power in order to be able to regenerate this kind of bushland,
01:19so we're dependent right now on flying foxes doing their job and working to regenerate these forests.
01:26One of the species behind me, the grey-headed flying fox, is already declared threatened due to the effects of climate change.
01:33We had year upon year of heat events where we lost thousands and thousands of breeding females and juveniles,
01:39which have actually reduced the numbers of flying foxes across all of the species,
01:44but certain species now have now become threatened and one up far north is now what we consider to be endangered.
01:51This is a concern just because they are such important species to our Australian ecosystem.
01:57Our blossoms in Australia have even co-evolved with flying foxes in mind,
02:03where even flying fox's fur has got little microscopic bristles that are designed
02:08to fit their faces in the cups of what we consider to be the stereotypical gum blossom,
02:14where they get their little gift of nectar in the bottom with the stamen,
02:18and when they put their head in to get that little cup, it covers their entire head and body in pollen.
02:23And then when they fly to the next flower, that's how we get our native flowers pollinated.
02:28Also, a lot of our native flowers are designed to be reflective in the moonlight so that flying foxes can see where they are overhead.
02:36And they also produce most of their nectar at night coinciding with when flying foxes will be flying over
02:42and we'll see them and get their little gift and their incentive to pollinate.