Comparative hematology of the Myotis blythii

Despite being a widespread group of mammals, bats have not been sufficiently studied in terms of their hematological parameters. There is a lack of data on the immune cells within their hematopoietic organs, such as the spleen and bone marrow, as well as on the structures involved in hematopoiesis, like erythroblastic islets. The aim of our work was to study hematological parameters including hemapoietic organs and hemoglobin in one of the most common species of bats, the lesser mouse-eared bat (Myotis blythii). Erythropoiesis in Myotis blythii (sometimes we can refer to the species as lesser mous-eared bat) is more intense, at least in comparison with other mammals studied in our study. This conclusion is supported by the significantly higher content of erythroid cells on the splenogram of Myotis blythii compared with rats and pigs. Erythroblastic islets in Myotis blythii are smaller compared with those in other mammals, even though the number of erythroblasts within the erythroblastic islets remains the same. While the size of the erythroblastic islets can vary and may decrease with certain pathologies, we believe that a reduction in size, typically accompanied by an increase in the number of erythroblastic islets, reflects more intense erythropoiesis. We believe that compared with rat and pig the observed shift of the Soret peak downwards and to the right in the spectrometry of hemoglobin in single erythrocytes of Myotis blythii compared to rat and pig is caused by the smaller amount of hemoglobin in the erythrocyte and the different primary structure of hemoglobin in bats.