Wikipedia:Today's featured list/October 7, 2019
Fruit bats, also known as megabats, are the 197 species of bats that make up the suborder Megachiroptera, found throughout the tropics of Africa, Asia, and Oceania, of which 186 are extant. The suborder is part of the order Chiroptera (bats), and contains a single family, Pteropodidae. The family is divided into between two to six subfamilies, with recent phylogenetic analysis suggesting a different classification structure of the known species than before. Bats have been traditionally thought to be a monophyletic group; according to this model, all living fruit bats and microbats (Microchiroptera) are descendants of a common ancestor species that was already capable of flight. However, there are alternate hypotheses which conclude that bats are paraphyletic. The flying primate hypothesis was created in the 1980s, stating that, based on morphological evidence, the Megachiroptera evolved flight separately from the Microchiroptera, although genetic evidence supports the monophyly of bats. (Full list...)