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Ophthalmology of Chiroptera: Bats

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Wild and Exotic Animal Ophthalmology

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Abstract

Bats (order Chiroptera) are the only mammals that can truly fly rather than glide (Graham 1994; Peracchi et al. 2011). Their forelimbs are adapted as wings and they possess very peculiar sensory adaptations. Bats are one of the most diverse groups of mammals, existing on every major landmass, except the Polar region and a few oceanic islands. With over 1230 species, making nearly 1 in 5 mammal species (21%) a bat, they are exceeded in number only by the order Rodentia (Simmons 2005; Reis et al. 2007; Fenton and Ratcliffe 2010; Hassi 2018). Bats are divided into two suborders: (1) Yinpterochiroptera (or Pteropodiformes), formerly known as megabats (old world fruit bats, or flying foxes), comprising seven families distributed in Africa, Asia, and Oceania; and (2) Yangochiroptera (or Vespertilioniformes), which includes most of those formerly known as microbat families, except for the Rhinopomatidae, Rhinolophidae, Hipposideridae, and Megadermatidae. These latter four Old World microbat families are now classified as Yinpterochiroptera, which is currently comprised of 14 families distributed worldwide (Graham 1994; Rojas et al. 2016).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Comparative Ophthalmology Laboratory (LABOCO), Veterinary Medicine Department, Federal University of Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil

    Fabiano Montiani-Ferreira

  2. Department of Small Animal Clinical Sciences, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

    Caryn E. Plummer

  3. Hope Advanced Veterinary Center, Vienna, VA, USA

    Elizabeth Adkins

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  1. Fabiano Montiani-Ferreira
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  2. Caryn E. Plummer
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  3. Elizabeth Adkins
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Correspondence to Fabiano Montiani-Ferreira .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Veterinary Medicine Department, Federal University of Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil

    Fabiano Montiani-Ferreira

  2. College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

    Bret A. Moore

  3. College of Veterinary Medicine, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA

    Gil Ben-Shlomo

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Montiani-Ferreira, F., Plummer, C.E., Adkins, E. (2022). Ophthalmology of Chiroptera: Bats. In: Montiani-Ferreira, F., Moore, B.A., Ben-Shlomo, G. (eds) Wild and Exotic Animal Ophthalmology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81273-7_15

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