Effects of different secondary vegetation types on bat community composition in Central Amazonia, Brazil

Abstract

The process of secondary succession on degraded lands in the Amazon depends on their land-use histories. In this scenario, little is known about how animal communities respond to different types of secondary vegetation in the region. We examined the effects of abandoned cattle pasture, Vismia-and Cecropia-dominated regrowth on the abundance of bat species and community composition in the Central Amazon, Brazil, based on 11 netting sites and on landscape characteristics. We captured 1444 bats, representing 26 species and two families (Phyllostomidae and Mormoopidae). Among the six most-captured Phyllostomidae bats, Sturnira lilium and Sturnira tildae had significantly higher capture rates in abandoned pasture, while Rhinophylla pumilio predominated in both Vismia-and Cecropia-dominated regrowth. An hybrid multidimensional scaling ordination revealed significant differences in the bat community among the three types of secondary vegetation. Phyllostominae bats were more common and richer in the less-disturbed areas of Cecropia-dominated regrowth, while Stenodermatinae species were more captured in abandoned pastures. Our results suggest that the type of secondary vegetation, together with its land-use history, affects bat community composition in the Central Amazon. The Phyllostominae subfamily (gleaning animalivores) was habitat selective and disappeared from areas experiencing constant disturbances. On the other hand, Stenodermatinae frugivorous bats often used and foraged in altered areas. We suggest that secondary vegetations in more-advanced successional stages can be used to augment the total area protected by forest conservation units.

Roosting Ecology of Amazonian Bats: Evidence for Guild Structure in Hyperdiverse Mammalian Communities

“…Many zoologists assume-explicitly or implicitly-that trophic-resource partitioning is important for species coexistence, and this conviction has motivated a still-burgeoning literature on Neotropical bat diets and feeding behavior (e.g., Heithaus et al, 1975;Fleming et al, 1977;Bonaccorso, 1979;Bonaccorso and Gush, 1987;Thies et al, 1998;Dumont, 1999;Wendeln et al, 2000;Tschapka, 2004;Kalko, 2004, 2005;Rex et al, 2011;Andrade et al, 2013;Saldaña-Vázquez, 2014). Various trophicguild classifications have been defined on the basis of this research (LaVal and Fitch, 1977;Bonaccorso, 1979;Kalko et al, 1996), and trophic-guild membership is often used to assess Amazonian bat community structure (e.g., by Kalko and Handley, 2001;Lim and Engstrom, 2001;Bernard, 2002;Sampaio et al, 2003;Peters et al, 2006;Willig et al, 2007;Rex et al, 2008;Klingbeil and Willig, 2009;Bobrowiec and Gribel, 2010). However, food is not the only resource that might be limiting for bat populations, so community-ecological studies based exclusively on trophic categories could be misleading or incomplete.…”

Bat assemblages in conservation areas of a metropolitan region in Southeastern Brazil, including an important karst habitat

“…forages preferentially in the canopy, while C. perspicillata and S. lilium prefer to forage in the understory, and P. lineatus in both forest strata (Kalko and Handley, 2001). Artibeus lituratus and S. lilium have been identified as indicators of habitat disturbance, and are found commonly in deforested landscapes (Reis et al, 2003;Gorresen and Willig, 2004;Bobrowiec and Gribel, 2010). Moreover, the structure of phyllostomid assemblages can be influenced by differences in floral diversity, differences in types of secondary vegetation, food availability and vegetation structure (Mancina et al, 2007;Rex et al, 2008;Bobrowiec and Gribel, 2010).…”

“…Interestingly, the phyllostomines and some insectivores have been considered more sensitive to environmental disturbances (Fenton et al, 1992;Schulze et al, 2000;Bobrowiec and Gribel, 2010). One such species, M. ruber, is classified by the IUCN as near threatened (Barquez and Diaz, 2008) and is listed as vulnerable in Brazil (Machado et al, 2005).…”

“…Artibeus lituratus and S. lilium have been identified as indicators of habitat disturbance, and are found commonly in deforested landscapes (Reis et al, 2003;Gorresen and Willig, 2004;Bobrowiec and Gribel, 2010). Moreover, the structure of phyllostomid assemblages can be influenced by differences in floral diversity, differences in types of secondary vegetation, food availability and vegetation structure (Mancina et al, 2007;Rex et al, 2008;Bobrowiec and Gribel, 2010). Therefore, only an analysis of diet and of the availability of resources can confirm whether the abundances of these species reflect real differences in partitioning of resources in the different vegetation strata in each study area.…”

“…Jackknife shows the average estimate of all samples and can estimate confidence intervals (95%). The number of captures per unit of sampling effort was also used to analyze the similarity between the localities based on the index of association of Bray-Curtis (Bray and Curtis, 1957). This index is regardless of the measurement scale and does not assign resemblance to joint absences, i.e., it ignores cases where there are absences in joint samples (Krebs, 1999).…”