Question

Pollination by bats is called as
(A) Chiropterophily
(B) Omithophily
(C) Malacophily
(D) Entomophily

Answer 1

Hint: Pollination by bats is most common in tropical and desert areas that in the majority have night-blooming plants. The term which is used to denote this type of pollination is taken from the order in which bats exist.

Complete answer:
Pollination by bats is called Chiropterophily. Bats are mammals of the order Chiroptera. Plants that are pollinated with the help of bats mostly have pale nocturnal flowers. These flowers are mostly found to be large and bell-shaped, and a few bats have evolved specifically to achieve the nectar at the lowest of them.

Additional Information: There are major differences between bat pollination within the New World as against the Old World. Within the Old World pollinating bats are large fruit bats of the family Pteropodidae which don't have the power to hover and must perch within the plant to lap the nectar; these bats furthermore don't have the power to echolocate.
While these plants depend on bats to pollinate their flowers, bats also depend on the fruit and flowers of these plants to survive.
In America, pollinating bats are tiny creatures called glossophagines which have both the power to hover also as echolocate, and have extremely long tongues. Plants in this part of the globe are often pollinated by both bats and hummingbirds and have long tubular flowers.
So, the correct answer is ‘(A) Chiropterophily’.

Note: The species of the banana bat that was only found on the Pacific Coast of Mexico both have extraordinarily long tongues for collecting nectar. The tongue of a tube-lipped nectar bat is more than one and a half times the length of its body.