Bats originated in Europe, rewriting mammals’ family tree, study reveals — SkimNews
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- The Nature study by more than 130 international researchers used 103 bat genomes from 21 bat families and 44 fossil specimens — mostly teeth — to establish that bats likely originated in Europe about 65 million years ago, overturning prior theories pointing to Africa, Asia, or North America.
- The Bat1K project, launched in 2017 to sequence genomes of all 1,500 living bat species — the second most diverse mammal group and one-fifth of all mammals — enabled the analysis; researchers say early modern bats dispersed from Europe into Africa, then Asia, the Americas, and Australia.
- Echolocation, like flight, evolved near the dawn of bat evolution, according to the findings, with a related 2025 study by evolutionary biologist Ariadna Morales showing early bat ancestors had excessive immune gene adaptations tied to viral tolerance and disease resistance.
- Bats carry Ebola, Nipah, and Marburg without becoming ill — a trait researchers now have a genomic "code book of life" to investigate, per study author Sarah Olson of the Wildlife Conservation Society, with potential payoffs for zoonotic-disease therapeutics, cancer treatments, and human aging research.
- About half of known bat species have unknown or decreasing populations, with 18% considered threatened by the IUCN; they face climate change, habitat loss, and persecution, while playing key ecological roles in pollination, seed dispersal, and mosquito control.
- In Canada and the United States, bats have died by the millions from white-nose syndrome, a fungal pathogen on hibernating bats' skin, and the new genomic data could help researchers investigate why some myotis species are more susceptible to the disease.
Why it matters: With 18% of bat species already threatened and white-nose syndrome wiping out North American populations by the millions, the new family tree gives conservation biologists a phylogenetic baseline to prioritize species — and gives immunologists a genomic map to decode bats' unusual viral tolerance, longevity, and cancer resistance, with direct implications for human therapeutics.
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