ODU Botanist Tatyana Lobova Authors Unique Book on Bats

Old Dominion University botanist Tatyana Lobova studied seeds and fruits in exquisite detail as a Ph.D. student and researcher in her native Russia. But the forks in the road of research now have led to her new book on bats-yes, winged mammals-that live in tropical forests of South America.

Actually, seeds and fruits do play a major role in the scholarly work that Lobova produced together with two co-authors. The book is titled "Seed Dispersal by Bats in the Neotropics." It was published in May by New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) Press.

Bats of temperate areas are well known as prodigious eaters of insects such as mosquitoes, but many tropical species eat fruits. In the New World tropics-known as the Neotropics-bats play an important ecological role as seed dispersers.

The new book describes in words and pictures all known bat-dispersed plants in the Neotropics, with a specific focus on the relatively undisturbed forests of central French Guiana. It covers a total of 549 species in 62 plant families, as well as 37 different species of fruit-eating bats.

"This is clearly a landmark study and will be a major reference work for students of neotropical bats and plants for a long time," wrote one of the book's reviewers, Theodore H. Fleming of the University of Miami. "The overall level of scholarship is excellent, the literature coverage is exhaustive and attention to detail and writing are exemplary."

Lobova's co-authors are Cullen Geiselman, a joint doctoral student at Columbia University and the Institute of Systemic Botany at the NYBG who studies nectar-feeding bats and the plants that they pollinate in French Guiana, and Scott Mori, the Nathaniel Lord Britton Curator of Botany at the Institute of Systematic Botany.

The ODU researcher said she met Mori when she sought a postdoctoral position at NYBG in 2000 just after she had received her Ph.D. in botany from the Komarov Botanical Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences.

"Dr. Mori, one of the world's leading specialists in flora of American tropics, told me about bat-plant interactions that he was interested in," Lobova said. "The bat research was taking off with an increasing pace during that time, and more and more young zoologists and tropical ecologists were working with the bats in the rain forests of the New World, which are the center of diversity of bats and plants. But, in order to know what kind of plants bats feed on and depend upon during different seasons in different areas, they needed a botanist. Dr. Mori thought that my training in fruit and seed biology would make me a perfect candidate to work on botanical aspects of bat-plant interactions."

Lobova eventually worked for seven years as a researcher with the NYBG and she has held the title of honorary curator there since she came to ODU, where she is a visiting assistant professor in biological sciences and a researcher with the Kaplan Orchid Conservatory.

When Lobova started the project with Mori, she said, "I had no knowledge of any kind about bats and no experience working in the tropical forests. But these challenges made the new research project very exciting. I fell in love with the beauty and richness of tropical forests and with these amazing nocturnal animals-the bats-that play a very important role in the ecosystem."

She said that despite numerous problems and inconveniences she has encountered in remote tropical forests, "I am absolutely convinced that there is no better place in the world for a botanist and ecologist to be."

So far, her research has taken her to rain forests in Brazil, Ecuador and Peru, as well as French Guiana. She and her colleagues analyze in the book the diverse traits of plants dispersed by bats to re-examine bat preferences of some fruiting plants over others, a phenomenon known as the "bat-fruit syndrome."

Lobova said the book provides a stimulus for further ecological and evolutionary studies, and will serve as a reference for anyone interested in conservation, systematics and plant-animal interactions in tropical forests.

More about the 465-page book can be found at http://www.amazon.com/Dispersal-Neotropics-Memoirs-Botanical-Garden/dp/0893275018/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1243545261&sr=8-1.