ABOVE: A. geoffroyi drinks nectar from E. frutescens
RALPH SIMON
Plants pollinated by nectar-drinking bats often have flowers that reflect ultrasonic waves, making it easier for the animals to locate flowers through echolocation. But one cactus does the opposite—it absorbs more ultrasound in the area surrounding its flowers, making them stand out against a “quieter” background, according to a preprint published on bioRxiv last month.
Espostoa frutescens is a type of column-shaped cactus found only in the Ecuadorian Andes mountains. It has small flowers on its side that open at night, attracting bats as they fly from flower to flower in search of nectar. One of its main pollinators is Geoffroy’s tailless bat (Anoura geoffroyi).
“Bats are really good pollinators,” Ralph Simon, a postdoc in Wouter Halfwerk’s lab at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the lead author of the preprint, tells The Scientist. “They carry a lot of pollen in their fur, ...
