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Hunting for Cuba's rare undead bats
NEWS & TECHNOLOGY FIELD NOTES Cueva la Barca, Cuba
Hunting for Cuba’s rare undead bats up and down the sinuous cave walls. Their leisurely, aerobatic flight pattern suggests these bats lead a very different life to the other bats in this cave. The species may be adapted to forage in the dense, tangled understorey of the surrounding forest. N. primus is evolutionarily unique and a top conservation priority. The Natalid family of bats have
IN THE pitch dark, the beam of a head torch illuminates hundreds of bats encircling a silhouetted figure. It’s our guide, telling us he has spotted the species we have travelled to a remote cave in western Cuba to find – the Cuban greater funnel-eared bat. We move deeper into the cave, treading carefully. Dozens of Cuban boas – some of them 3 metres long – lie strewn across the lunar-like floor. Giant crabs, centipedes and tarantulas scuttle. A lot of the wildlife down here feasts on guano and unfortunate newborn bats that lose their grip. There are 13 species of bat in this cave, but the greater funnel-eared bat (Natalus primus) is special. Seen only as fossils, the species was thought to be extinct. Then, in 1992, it apparently came back from the dead. Two Cuban scientists stumbled on a population in a remote cave in western Cuba, Cueva la Barca (“the boat cave”). The cave is a crucial habitat as it provides the humid and hot conditions – 40°C in the deepest chamber – that some bat species seem to require for breeding. Our hearts race as we spot our first N. primus. Several dozen individuals fly
First timeline of cancer from origin to spread IT’S rare that anything good comes from cancer diagnosis. But one man’s illness has led to the first precise tracing of a cancer’s evolution. A rare turn of events gave doctors the exact time at which a tumour developed in the patient’s body, letting them create a timeline of how his cancer evolved from a few cells, to the metastatic tumours that caused 14 | NewScientist | 20 May 2017
ZSL/OLIVERWEARN
Oliver Wearn
his death. The analysis provides tools that may be used in the future to predict the behaviour of cancers. The analysis was carried out on a man diagnosed with bowel cancer, which later spread to other areas of his body. Doctors took a biopsy of a nodule in his lung, which was discovered to be cancerous. Two years later another tumour was discovered in the exact area where the biopsy needle had been withdrawn. This unfortunate and rare side effect of the biopsy provided Nicola Valeri at the Institute of Cancer Research in London and his colleagues
been evolving in isolation from other bats for around 50 million years, so they represent a disproportionately large share of mammalian evolutionary history. We emerge into the dappled shade of the forest, relishing the deep breaths we can take for the first time all morning. Our local guide Jose Manuel de la Cruz, a bat expert based at the Pinar del Río Museum of Natural History, tells us that he’s worried about how few N. primus we saw – perhaps fewer than 400. The species desperately needs a long-term monitoring project, but resources for conservation are scarce in Cuba.
Trucks rumble past in the distance and Jose tells us that foresters are sizing up the area for logging. When N. primus was discovered alive and well, the boundaries of the nearby Guanahacabibes National Park were extended to encompass Cueva la Barca, but only just. The cave lies a mere 250 metres inside the boundary. Presumably, our bats forage outside the park, but we don’t really know. Very little is known about the species. To find out where N. primus goes each night, we deploy dozens of sound traps in the forest – acoustic versions of camera traps, tuned to listen for and record the ultrasonic call of the species. Carolina Soto Navarro, one of the scientists on this Zoological Society of London expedition, says the goal is to find out how the different bat species in this forest partition their use of the habitat, and exactly how far they go from la Barca. But the forest doesn’t make it easy. Its floor is covered in dientes de perro (“dog’s teeth”) – the dagger-sharp remains of coral reefs from a bygone era. It tears chunks out of the soles of our boots as we walk gingerly across it. Cuba is a forgotten trove of biodiversity. Decades of diplomatic tension between the US and Cuba have done little to change this. The hope is that through continued work with our Cuban colleagues, we can help preserve its treasures and finally –Unique bats survive in Cuban cave– unravel the mystery of N. primus. n
with a kind of stopwatch – an exact point in time when a few cells left as the needle was withdrawn began their two year evolution into a tumour. This timestamp – together with a genetic analysis of all the tumours the man developed before his death – enabled them to study how many mutations the cancer had acquired over time. This data could then be used to follow the progression of the
“It suggests that sometimes, there’s a large time window to disrupt metastatic spread”
disease back in time to its origins (Annals of Oncology, doi.org/f9vrcx). The analysis showed that the primary cancer had emerged five to eight years before it was diagnosed. A year later, it travelled to the lung where it remained dormant for years. “It suggests that sometimes, there’s a large time window to disrupt metastatic spread,” says Valeri. Tools like these will be critical in the management of cancer, allowing us to judge how fast a tumour is evolving and predict its response to therapies, says Carlo Maley of Arizona State University. Andy Coghlan n
Hunting for Cuba’s rare undead bats up and down the sinuous cave walls. Their leisurely, aerobatic flight pattern suggests these bats lead a very different life to the other bats in this cave. The species may be adapted to forage in the dense, tangled understorey of the surrounding forest. N. primus is evolutionarily unique and a top conservation priority. The Natalid family of bats have
IN THE pitch dark, the beam of a head torch illuminates hundreds of bats encircling a silhouetted figure. It’s our guide, telling us he has spotted the species we have travelled to a remote cave in western Cuba to find – the Cuban greater funnel-eared bat. We move deeper into the cave, treading carefully. Dozens of Cuban boas – some of them 3 metres long – lie strewn across the lunar-like floor. Giant crabs, centipedes and tarantulas scuttle. A lot of the wildlife down here feasts on guano and unfortunate newborn bats that lose their grip. There are 13 species of bat in this cave, but the greater funnel-eared bat (Natalus primus) is special. Seen only as fossils, the species was thought to be extinct. Then, in 1992, it apparently came back from the dead. Two Cuban scientists stumbled on a population in a remote cave in western Cuba, Cueva la Barca (“the boat cave”). The cave is a crucial habitat as it provides the humid and hot conditions – 40°C in the deepest chamber – that some bat species seem to require for breeding. Our hearts race as we spot our first N. primus. Several dozen individuals fly
First timeline of cancer from origin to spread IT’S rare that anything good comes from cancer diagnosis. But one man’s illness has led to the first precise tracing of a cancer’s evolution. A rare turn of events gave doctors the exact time at which a tumour developed in the patient’s body, letting them create a timeline of how his cancer evolved from a few cells, to the metastatic tumours that caused 14 | NewScientist | 20 May 2017
ZSL/OLIVERWEARN
Oliver Wearn
his death. The analysis provides tools that may be used in the future to predict the behaviour of cancers. The analysis was carried out on a man diagnosed with bowel cancer, which later spread to other areas of his body. Doctors took a biopsy of a nodule in his lung, which was discovered to be cancerous. Two years later another tumour was discovered in the exact area where the biopsy needle had been withdrawn. This unfortunate and rare side effect of the biopsy provided Nicola Valeri at the Institute of Cancer Research in London and his colleagues
been evolving in isolation from other bats for around 50 million years, so they represent a disproportionately large share of mammalian evolutionary history. We emerge into the dappled shade of the forest, relishing the deep breaths we can take for the first time all morning. Our local guide Jose Manuel de la Cruz, a bat expert based at the Pinar del Río Museum of Natural History, tells us that he’s worried about how few N. primus we saw – perhaps fewer than 400. The species desperately needs a long-term monitoring project, but resources for conservation are scarce in Cuba.
Trucks rumble past in the distance and Jose tells us that foresters are sizing up the area for logging. When N. primus was discovered alive and well, the boundaries of the nearby Guanahacabibes National Park were extended to encompass Cueva la Barca, but only just. The cave lies a mere 250 metres inside the boundary. Presumably, our bats forage outside the park, but we don’t really know. Very little is known about the species. To find out where N. primus goes each night, we deploy dozens of sound traps in the forest – acoustic versions of camera traps, tuned to listen for and record the ultrasonic call of the species. Carolina Soto Navarro, one of the scientists on this Zoological Society of London expedition, says the goal is to find out how the different bat species in this forest partition their use of the habitat, and exactly how far they go from la Barca. But the forest doesn’t make it easy. Its floor is covered in dientes de perro (“dog’s teeth”) – the dagger-sharp remains of coral reefs from a bygone era. It tears chunks out of the soles of our boots as we walk gingerly across it. Cuba is a forgotten trove of biodiversity. Decades of diplomatic tension between the US and Cuba have done little to change this. The hope is that through continued work with our Cuban colleagues, we can help preserve its treasures and finally –Unique bats survive in Cuban cave– unravel the mystery of N. primus. n
with a kind of stopwatch – an exact point in time when a few cells left as the needle was withdrawn began their two year evolution into a tumour. This timestamp – together with a genetic analysis of all the tumours the man developed before his death – enabled them to study how many mutations the cancer had acquired over time. This data could then be used to follow the progression of the
“It suggests that sometimes, there’s a large time window to disrupt metastatic spread”
disease back in time to its origins (Annals of Oncology, doi.org/f9vrcx). The analysis showed that the primary cancer had emerged five to eight years before it was diagnosed. A year later, it travelled to the lung where it remained dormant for years. “It suggests that sometimes, there’s a large time window to disrupt metastatic spread,” says Valeri. Tools like these will be critical in the management of cancer, allowing us to judge how fast a tumour is evolving and predict its response to therapies, says Carlo Maley of Arizona State University. Andy Coghlan n