Jebb, D. et al. Nature 583, 578—584 (2020)

The 1400+ species of bats make up about 20% of the mammalian species alive today. Among all those bats you’ll find considerably diversity and a number of intriguing traits, such as the ability to fly and echolocate and, of relevance to human health, considerable longevity relative to their small size and resistance to viral infections that would (and do) lay us low.

The Bat1K project hopes to better understand how bats do what they do and are what they are through their genomes. The project recently released its first batch of chromosome-level reference genomes for six different bat species, which join 15 in the project’s database that were sequenced previously by other groups. Genome-wide screens of the reference genomes revealed selection for and loss of a number of genes with potential roles in bat hearing and the bat immune system.