Flying foxes vanish after Cyclone Larry
Cyclone Larry, which hit Australia's northeast in March, has scattered 10,000 flying foxes far and wide, says a zoologist.
And CSIRO's Dr Louise Shilton needs to find this local species of crow-sized, fruit-eating bat quickly.
The event is both good and bad for her ongoing project to monitor the usually poorly distributed animals.
It's bad news because it's rather difficult to study animals you can't find.
"We need to be providing the best possible population data and we can't monitor them without knowing where they roost," says Shilton.
Among her questions are what they are eating and where they have chosen to roost.
The good news is that when she finds them, she'll probably be able to learn what these animals regard as good habitat, a matter of debate at the moment, she says.
Do they really depend solely on undisturbed forest or do they like urban areas where fruit trees are irrigated and predators are few?
It's the sort of thing people who love, and those who loathe, flying foxes want to know.
"There's this kind of love-hate relationship with fruit bats in Australia," says Shilton.
Some people adore them and point to evidence that flying foxes play a critical role in pollinating and spreading the seeds of native plants. Others are less enthusiastic.
"They do come into contact with fruit growers," says Shilton. "But they also come into conflict with people in urban environments."
That's because the bats congregate in large noisy crowds and produce foul-smelling guano.
The animosity was bad enough that it was once common for people to shoot flying foxes. Now, however, the local northern Queensland species is protected and a permit is required to kill them.
"This particular species is the one with the smallest distribution and it is believed to have the smallest population," Shilton says.
Scattered or killed?
Shilton is pretty certain the bats were scattered rather than killed by the cyclone, because she visited known roosting sites and found few dead animals, "just a handful compared to the 10,000 that had been around before the storm".
And some people reported seeing the bats hurrying away en masse before the storm arrived, probably a natural response to quickly dropping air pressure.
"I would agree that Queensland probably does offer more places for the flying foxes to escape the storm," says Dr Kim McConkey, a wildlife researcher who studied the effects of another cyclone on another species of flying foxes in Tonga.
"We recorded an 80% decline in flying fox abundance in Tonga after the cyclone, and this was almost certainly due to mortality, either directly during the storm or afterwards due to a lack of food" and human hunting, she adds.
McConkey's colleagues also reported seeing bat carcasses in the lagoon after the island cyclone, she says.
Out in daylight
To find out where the Queensland bats are, Shilton has asked the public to call her with information. Already, she says, there are sightings of flying foxes heading out for food in daylight, an unusual behaviour for the nocturnal animal.
That information alone suggests some bats are finding food scarce and working harder to get a meal.
Meanwhile, says Shilton, anyone cheering at the flying foxes' disappearance shouldn't assume they have disappeared for good.
"I've personally got no doubt that once the native trees come into season the bats will come back," Shilton says.