Astha Singh* & Shiva Prasad
Department of Zoology, Ranchi University, Ranchi, Jharkhand, India
Received : 11th October, 2017 ; Revised :14th December,2017
Abstract : Pteropus giganteus is the giant Indian fruit bat that colonizes on tall canopies near water bodies exposed to environmental perturbations. Decline in the population of these bats as well as mortality during summer season has been reported by several authors but no reason has been suggested. Further, a potential marker for environmental heat stress (EHS) is still lacking. This work was therefore done for finding the association of EHS with neutrophil and lymphocyte ratio (N/L ratio). N/L ratio is used for studying heat stress in animals. Bats numbering 12 were captured and acclimatized for 15 days. The cage was placed under the colony and blood samples were collected from the bats. Blood smears were prepared and studied under the microscope. The result suggests N/L ratio shows an increasing trend beyond 30°C of ambient temperature and is also highly correlated to it (r = 0.67). Thus, it may be concluded that N/L ratio can be used for monitoring EHS. Future study may be done to evaluate the immunological changes for understanding the mechanism behind heterothermy in bats.
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