Seasonal and Reproductive Effects on Wound Healing in the Flight Membranes of Captive Big Brown Bats (Eptesicus fuscus)

Abstract

Bats (Order Chiroptera) are the only mammals capable of power flight. The flight membranes of bats are not only essential for locomotion, but also play vital roles in homeostasis. Although understanding wound healing in the flight membranes of bats is important because injuries in the wild are common, with the recent emergence of white-nose syndrome, understanding wound healing in bat flight membranes has become even more important. In order to conduct my studies on wound healing in the flight membranes of bats, it was necessary to manually restrain bats. In this thesis I present a novel bat restrainer that I designed and that reduces stress experienced by restrained bats during experimentation and data collection. Wound healing is an energy dependent process, as such it is expected that wound healing times will vary during periods of energy constraint (i.e. hibernation) and/or at times of peak demand (i.e. lactation). However, previous studies on wound healing have only looked at healing at times when there are no energy constraints. In thesis I aimed to better understand the effects of seasonality and reproduction on wound healing. Using an 8 mm circular punch, I inflicted biopsy wounds to the chiropatagium of healthy captive big brown bats, Eptesicus fuscus. I compared wound healing times between winter and summer seasons, and between reproductive (i.e. lactating) and non-reproductive females. As expected, wound healing times were longer during the winter months when bats are conserving energy. On the other hand, reproductive status did not have an effect on wound healing times. Although most bats heal, I observed impaired wound healing. This finding is important because it is the first time that impaired wound healing is reported in healthy bats.