Bats provide crucial ecosystem services like pest control and pollination and depend heavily on roost quality for their survival. Bats favor caves for the establishment of large populations thanks to favorable microclimatic conditions. Colombia has an important cave system in the Santander region that has not been fully explored, thus its importance for bat conservation remains largely unknown. Here we report the most updated list of the species present in the Macaregua Cave (Santander, Colombia) and comment on its use by different species. We found eight species that use the cave permanently or sporadically in addition to two previously known species. We also found a high population that ranges between 7,000-10,000 individuals. Macaregua Cave can now be recognized as the most bat-diverse (S = 10) cave in Colombia, harboring an important bat population of pest controllers and seed dispersers.

Bats use roost sites to reduce energy costs, for reproduction, and to protect themselves from harsh weather conditions and predators. The roosts differ in the environmental and spatial features that may be used by bats during roost selection, but the relationship between the types of roosts and the physical and spatial characteristics remain poorly understood. We studied the characteristics of roost sites used by Carollia perspicillata in a cave with an area of approximately 600 m 2 located in a remnant of tropical dry forest in Colombia. A total of 156 roost sites were sampled. Temperature, relative humidity, distance of the roost site from the cave entrance, relative location within the cave, the roost-site height, and the roost-site area were correlated with each other by canonical correlation analysis. A total of seven types of roost were identified, Cavity, Protrusion, Crack-withProtrusions, Cavity-with-Protrusions, Cavity-with-Crack-and-Protrusions, Stalactite, and Rock-Structure. Protrusions had the highest frequency (64) and was preferred, along with Crack-with-Protrusions (32), over Rocky-Structure (9) and Stalactite (4), and these were not positively related to the measured characteristics. The Cavity-with-Protrusions, Cavity-with-Crack-and-Protrusions, and Cavity types were not used by Carollia perspicillata. The results indicate that the selection of the roost sites is addressed by the tendency of lower values, environmental characteristics, and spatial measures.

Gardnerycteris crenulatum is a bat species restricted to South America, being particularly rare in lowland rainforests. It is characterized by a diet composed mainly of arthropods and small vertebrates, with no confirmed evidence of fruit consumption. Here, we provide the first records of seeds in the diet of G. crenulatum. The seeds were found in the feces of two individuals captured in late-successional forests in the Colombian Amazon (one pregnant female and one adult male), that belonged to Piper sp. (n = 125) and Cecropia engleriana (n = 3). In germination experiments, only Piper seeds germinated (8%). Insectivores can potentially perform other functions than the role assigned to their corresponding guild. More research is needed on the natural history and ecology of G. crenulatum to elucidate its possible role as seed disperser.

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El presente libro resume gran parte de los resultados del proyecto “Distribución histórica, actual y futura de mamíferos y sus relaciones e importancia sociocultural en el departamento de Cundinamarca: herramientas de planificación de conservación” desarrollado por la Corporación Universitaria Minuto de Dios y ProCAT Colombia, con financiamiento del Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación (MinCiencias).