Wound healing in wing membranes of the Egyptian fruit bat (Rousettus aegyptiacus) and big brown bat (Eptesicus fuscus)

Bat flight membranes are critical for locomotion, foraging, and physiological homeostasis. Wild bats frequently injure their flight membranes during interactions with the environment and conspecifics or from disease. Researchers biopsy bat wing membranes to mark individuals or collect tissue for taxonomic and molecular studies. Because there are differences in the embryological development of different wing membrane regions, we evaluated differences in flight membrane healing between 2 anatomical regions using 4-mm diameter circular biopsies in the chiropatagium and plagiopatagium of the Egyptian fruit bat (Rousettus aegyptiacus; Pteropodiformes) and the insectivorous big brown bat (Eptesicus fuscus; Vespertilioniformes). In R. aegyptiacus, plagiopatagium wounds took longer to heal to 50% of their initial area compared to chiropatagium wounds; however, this difference was not observed in E. fuscus. Plagiopatagium wounds also were more likely to enlarge in the days immediately following biopsy in R. aegyptiacus compared to E. fuscus. A sigmoid function accurately modeled wound areas and thus healing times in both species. Given the observed differences in wound-healing times between distinct regions of the bat wing membrane, our results indicate that researchers should choose a tissue biopsy location based on the species and question of interest.