Morphology, Diet and Flower‐visiting by Phyllostomid Bats in Cuba

Abstract

Pollinator morphology can play an important role in structuring plant-pollinator relationships and a pollinator's morphology may be associated with aspects of its diet. We examined the relationship between morphology and the partitioning of flower-based food resources for five species of flower-visiting Cuban bats: Artibeus jamaicensis, Brachyphylla nana, Erophylla sezekorni, Monophyllus redmani and Phyllonycteris poeyi. We analyzed cranial traits and body size to assess differences among species with respect to morphological specializations. We also collected dietary data from guano and used acoustic monitoring to assess bat activity at flowers. We found evidence that bats partition floral resources, but we found no direct evidence that plants were limiting resources for the bats. Morphological similarity among bat species did not predict dietary overlap. Rather it was associated with phylogenic relationships among some species. Species with different morphological specialization for flower-visiting consumed resources and visited food plants at different frequencies.Abstract in Spanish is available in the online version of this article.

Floral resource partitioning by individuals within generalised hoverfly pollination networks revealed by DNA metabarcoding

“… 53 found evidence of differences in flower preference in four species of adult hoverflies: Episyrphus balteatus, Eristalis tenax , Sy ritta pipiens and Sphaerophoria scripta . Resource partitioning has also been previously noted in a range of pollinators, including bumblebees 56 , mixed bee communities 57 , birds 58 and bats 59 . Our results demonstrate significant differences in the proportions of pollen taxa in the pollen loads of hoverfly genera and species, suggesting that hoverfly species may be fulfilling a complementary role to each other in pollen transport in the grasslands in our study.…”

Interspecific competition in bats: state of knowledge and research challenges

“…vertebrates (Freeman 1984). On the other hand, elongated skulls are an adaptation to consuming resources from flowers (Freeman 1995, Clairmont et al 2014. By differing in their cranial shape, otherwise competing bat species may partition food niches and mitigate IC.…”

“…Absence of agonistic interactions for food between morphologically similar bat species in syntopy despite their large trophic niche overlap may be due to the non-limiting availability of food resources (Clairmont et al 2014), so IC studies should always explore whether a given resource is actually limiting. Moreover, insufficient taxonomic resolution in dietary analysis, such as the resolution typically provided by morphological inspection of prey remains in droppings, may suggest consumption of the same food types, whereas the pattern would disappear should food items be recognised in more detail.…”

Morphology reflects differently the various facets of species traits in stream fish

“…However, ecological traits, and a fortiori functional diversity, encapsulate several components of the ecological niche such as feeding, habitat use or life‐history strategies. Several ecological and morphological studies have documented relationships between morphology and one particular aspect of ecological strategy, especially for habitat use, in lizards (Higham et al., 2015; Ord & Klomp, 2014) and fish (Leal et al., 2013), and for feeding diet in fish (Berchtold et al., 2015; Ferreira Filho et al., 2014; Machado‐Evangelista et al., 2015), bats (Clairmont et al., 2014) and birds (Lisney et al., 2013). Strong links between body size and reproductive life‐history traits also have been established (Kingsolver & Pfennig, 2004; Stahler et al., 2013) since body size is under several selection pressures (Herrel et al., 2008; Olson & Hearty, 2010).…”