We undertook this study at a number

We undertook this study at a number of sites across southern Ghana. The initial focus for the study was the city of Accra, which holds a massive seasonal colony of 250,000–1 million E. helvum individuals (Hayman, 2008), and where we had observed local hunting and consumption of E. helvum prior to this study. Given the large numbers and dense, highly visible roosting of E. helvum in Accra in comparison to other bat species, we expected that it would be the predominant bat species used as bushmeat in the city. There is a notable scarcity of bats in published reports of the bushmeat trade in Ghana (e.g. Brashares et al., 2004, Cowlishaw et al., 2005b), which led us to hypothesize that the use of bats as bushmeat had been underestimated. The primary aim of our study, therefore, was to evaluate the numbers of fruit bats in general, and E. helvum in particular, that are hunted or sold in southern Ghana as bushmeat. If our hypothesis of a previous underestimation of the presence of fruit bats in the bushmeat trade was confirmed, we aimed to understand why this might have occurred. Finally, we sought to establish if hunted E. helvum passed through the same commodity chain as other Ghanaian bushmeat, and from where these bats were sourced.