Morphological and Dietary Structuring of a Zambian Insectivorous Bat Community

Abstract

Diet and external morphology of nine species of insectivorous bats from Zambia East Africa, were compared using multivariate methods. Morphological and dietary resemblance between spe_cies were positively correlated; that is, taxa which resembled each other most strongly morphol?g!cally were also most similar in dietary intake. The degree of morphological and dietary distinctiveness of a ~pecies_ was posi~ivel~ c_orrelated with its morphological and dietary variability. For exa_mple,_ spec1es wh1ch ~re qmte d1stmct from others in morphology or diet tend also to be quite v~nable m _those two attnbutes. Morphology of the bats was strongly predictive of their diets; most d1etary vanance _was accounted for by morphological variance, and the first morphological principal compone_nt predicted the presence in the diet of Lepidoptera, beetles, and Orthoptera with a high !eve! ~f s1gmfican~e. These results led to a model of community organization for closely related species m wh1ch a relatively large number of specialists with invariant attributes are clustered near the community cen~roid and a smaller number of distinctive, variable species occupy niches more distant from the centrmd.

Ontogenetic dietary shifts and morphological correlates in striped mullet, Mugil cephalus

“…There has been no clear consensus from this apparently simplistic working hypothesis. Studies by Karr & James (1975), Chao & Musick (1977), Gatz (1979), Findley & Black (1983) and Moyle & Senanayake (1984) have shown that the diet is correlated to morphology. Wiens & Rotenberry (1980) found that the few correlations between prey size and suites of covarying morphological traits were quite weak.…”

“…Diet The main tenet of the ecomorphological hypothesis is that morphological specializations limit prey utilization and thus species with similar morphologies should possess similar diets (Wiens & Rotenberry 1980, Findley & Black 1983. There has been no clear consensus from this apparently simplistic working hypothesis.…”

Does morphological variation buffer against extinction? A test using veneroid bivalves from the Plio-Pleistocene of Florida

“…Numerous studies have demonstrated that a large geographic or environmental range size confers resistance to extinction (Lloyd and Gould 1993;Payne and Finnegan 2007;Jablonski 2008). Morphological variation has also been correlated with niche breadth in several cases (Van Valen 1965;Findlay and Black 1983;Bolnick et al 2007); if highly variable species act as generalists they may be more robust to environmental changes (Kammer et al 1997). These explanations posit an indirect but nevertheless causal relationship between variation and extinction: variation causes geographic or ecological breadth, which in turn promotes survivorship.…”

Quantitative analysis of the effect of prey properties on feeding kinematics in two species of lizards

“…From a life history perspective, the relevance of feeding function is evident, because of its clear link to an individual's fitness (Findley and Black, 1983).…”