Bats’ flight-adapted physiologies make them highly susceptible to severe droughts and heat waves. Plus, the proliferation of wind turbines — a climate solution that provides energy without harmful greenhouse gas emissions, and one we’ll need more of to combat warming — is killing them in droves.

While bats remain highly understudied relative to birds and other mammals, scientists are sounding the alarm. In North America, more than half of all bat species are at risk of severe population declines, due to other problems like fungal pathogens and the plight of insects. Climate change, they say, threatens to only speed up their demise.