Phyllostomid Bats: A Unique Mammalian Radiation
Edited by Theodore H. Fleming, Liliana M. Davalos & Marco A. R. Mello
University of Chicago Press, 2020

When reading a book like this magnificent new volume from the University of Chicago Press, Phyllostomid Bats: A Unique Mammalian Radiation, it’s important to understand the usage in the title: the radiation being discussed here is out-filing and endless tiny, fussy adaptations that a group of species can make to a variety of ecological and behavioral niches. As the book’s editors point out right away, the marquee example of adaptive radiation will probably always be Darwin’s famous finches, but in any case of animal adaptation, bats, specifically microchiroptera (the little bats, not the big flying foxes), some of the most successful creatures in evolutionary story, will always merit extra attention. 

Out from the bat superfamily of Noctilionoidea, the standout evolutionary performers are the phyllostomids, the New World leaf-nosed bats, numbering at 60 genera and 216 species. Since the late 1970s, scholarship has been growing on the various behaviors and morphological of these fascinating creatures, and now, with this oversized, beautifully-designed and illustrated volume, the best distillations of that research are presented to a general readership.

If that isn’t over-generous, of course. Despite the earnestly nerdy optimism of the folks at the University of Chicago Press, it’s likely that Phyllostomid Bats will appeal mostly to bat specialists. Each of the chapters - on evolution, on population biology, on conservation challenges, and of course one whole chapter (by John Hermanson and Gerald Carter) on Desmodus, the infamous vampire bat - comes absolutely bristling with notes and references of the type and profusion that are common with compilations of monographs but might prompt general-interest readers to blanche, vomit, or flee in panic. 

They’ll be missing out! Phyllostomid Bats, although abstruse and nerdy in the extreme, is a wonderful intaglio of the sheer ferocious inventiveness of evolution. These leaf-nosed bats have radiated out to fill and exploit every conceivable niche where food and breeding might be found; in their endless forms - and in the wearily predictable ways they’re threatened in the 21st century - they are, among other things, fascinating bellwethers. 

And readers who might have a bat aficionado on their gift-recipient list? Well, their course is clear this book-season.

—Steve Donoghue is a founding editor of Open Letters Monthly. His book criticism has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The American Conservative. He writes regularly for The National, The Vineyard Gazette, and The Christian Science Monitor. His website is http://www.stevedonoghue.com.