Wound healing in the flight membranes of wild big brown bats

ABSTRACT The flight membranes of bats are susceptible to damage (e.g., holes and tears) from a number of sources, including impacts with natural and man‐made objects, fighting between conspecifics, and attacks by predators or pathogens. Biologists routinely biopsy bat wings as a method of tissue collection for molecular research, and sometimes for the temporary identification of animals in the field. A previous study reported that captive big brown bats ( Eptesicus fuscus ) rapidly and completely healed flight membrane wounds. Given that limited care is provided to animals following tissue biopsy in the field, we sought to determine whether healing times for wounds from bats in captivity were applicable to bats in the wild. We measured and compared healing times of wounds in the wing and tail membranes of 50 non‐reproductive female big brown bats from a wild population in Cuba following recapture. Tail wounds healed significantly faster than wing wounds of the same size, likely because of the increased thickness and vasculature of the tail membrane. Our data are concordant with a previous laboratory study in captive big brown bats, and confirm that tail membrane biopsies are better for obtaining tissue samples for molecular work because tail wounds heal faster than wing wounds. © 2015 The Wildlife Society.