THEORIES about how bats evolved have been thrown into disarray by a detailed study of the animals鈥� DNA. Received wisdom has it that all bats share a common ancestor, but that subsequent generations evolved into two sub-orders according to whether they locate their prey by sight (the megabats) or sound (the microbats).
But DNA analysis by Michael Stanhope of the Queen鈥檚 University of Belfast threw up a surprise (Nature, vol 403, p 188). It showed that one family of microbats鈥攊ncluding the horseshoe bat鈥攊s more closely related to the megabats than to other microbats. 鈥淚t means either that echolocation evolved twice, or that it was lost by the megabats,鈥� says Stanhope.