What If Gone

Species → Mexican Long-nosed Bat

Mexican Long-nosed Bat

Leptonycteris yerbabuenae

No global figure has been published (IUCN: Near Threatened).…
Extinction risk Near Threatened
PollinatorDesert environmentUmbrella species
Mexican Long-nosed Bat (Leptonycteris yerbabuenae)
Photo: Juan Cruzado Cortés, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

What if it disappeared?

Impact Moderate
A single night of bloom

Without bats feeding on agave flower nectar, several agave species would lose their most efficient documented nocturnal pollinator — including some used for tequila and mezcal.

Documented
Detail

Pollination biology of Agave horrida (Agavaceae) in the Chichinautzin mountain range, Central Mexico. Botanical Sciences, 95(3), 423–431 (2017).

Agave flowers open at night and produce nectar suited to nectar-feeding bats. In several agave species, fruits resulting from pollination by Leptonycteris yerbabuenae produce significantly more seeds than those pollinated by other visitors.

Over several decades

A sustained decline in bat pollination could reduce the genetic diversity of wild agaves, which depend on sexual reproduction — unlike agaves cultivated for tequila, which are propagated by cloning.

Extrapolated
Detail

Extrapolation à partir des études de pollinisation de l'agave par Leptonycteris yerbabuenae : le raisonnement relie un mécanisme documenté à une conséquence génétique à long terme jamais mesurée directement.

Agave cultivated for tequila is almost always propagated by cloning (offshoots), which makes it largely independent of bat pollination in the short term — but wild agave populations, which sustain the species' genetic diversity over the long term, depend on it far more directly.

What's missing to confirm it: The actual extent of genetic diversity loss in wild agave populations over several generations, due to insufficient pollination, has not been directly measured.

Documentation

Last verified: August 7, 2026