The heat is on: Thermoregulatory and evaporative cooling patterns of desert-dwelling bats.

For small endotherms inhabiting desert ecosystems, defending body temperatures (T) is challenging as they contend with extremely high ambient temperatures (T) and limited standing water. In the arid zone, bats may thermoconform whereby T varies with T, or may evaporatively cool themselves to maintain T < T. We used an integrative approach that combined both temperature telemetry and flow through respirometry to investigate the ecological and physiological strategies of lesser long-eared bats (Nyctophilus geoffroyi) in Australia's arid zone.