bats

With industrial tequila farms switching to cloned agave plants, the bats that pollinate them are disappearing. “You can't have tequila without agave, the spiky desert plant used as its base,” says NPR. “And it's hard to have agave without bats — because a few species of these winged creatures are the plant's primary pollinators. Agave co-evolved with bats over thousands of years. As a result, it's one of the very few plants that pollinates at night.”

Many of the world’s wild mammals, from primates to bats, are being hunted to extinction for bushmeat, says The Guardian. In the first global report on the ecological impact of human hunting, researchers warn that without better management practices not only will species disappear, but hundreds of millions of rural people who rely on bushmeat for food could go hungry.

Katherine Ingram, a doctoral student at UC-Davis, "is exploring the role bats can play as winged soldiers in the battle against a nonnative pest," the codling moth, which attacks California's $2 billion-a-year walnut crop, says Ensia.