Access
This article is part of Nature's premium content.
Published online 14 September 2005 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news050912-8
News
Bats keep it in the family
Female bats share mates with relatives, but without close inbreeding.
Sharing the same sexual partner with your mother or grandmother may sound odd, but female greater horseshoe bats (Rhinolophus ferrumequinum) in Britain do it all the time.
This ensures that the bats in the colony are closely related to each other, says Stephen Rossiter at Queen Mary, University of London, lead author of a study appearing this week in Nature1.
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
Comments
Reader comments are usually moderated after posting. If you find something offensive or inappropriate, you can speed this process by clicking 'Report this comment' (or, if that doesn't work for you, email webadmin@nature.com). For more controversial topics, we reserve the right to moderate before comments are published.
There are currently no comments.
