Forest Structure and Composition Affect Bats in a Tropical Evergreen Broadleaf Forest

Willcox, Emma V.; Giuliano, William M.; Watine, Lauren; Mills, Daniel J.; Andreu, Michael G.

doi:10.3390/f8090317

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 64 publications

(72 reference statements)

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“…In general, most bat species were highly associated with structural features of the landscape, such as roads, waterways and forest edges (Kerbiriou et al, ; Lisón, Palazón, & Calvo, ; Lisón & Sánchez‐Fernández, ). Roads may act as an important commuting or foraging habitat, especially in forested area (Bellamy et al, ; Willcox, Giuliano, Watine, Mills, & Andreu, ). Furthermore, when lit, roads also attract insects and therefore favour those species not disturbed by lights, such as Pipistrellus , Nyctalus and Eptesicus spp.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modelling bat distributions and diversity in a mountain landscape using focal predictors in ensemble of small models

Scherrer

Christe

Guisan

2019

Diversity and Distributions

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Aim: Bats are important components of mammalian biodiversity and strong bioindicators, but their fine-scale distributions often remain less known than other taxa (e.g., plants, birds). Yet as highly mobile species with multiple needs in the landscape, bats impose serious modelling challenges, such as advanced use of neighbourhood analyses. The aims of this study were to test the use of a designed sampling of bats for biodiversity and conservation assessments, and to find appropriate modelling solutions for providing nature practitioners with reliable potential bat distribution maps in a mountain area of high conservation interest. Location:The western Swiss Alps of Vaud. Methods:We conducted a one-year field survey combining passive acoustic recordings supplemented by mist net catching to collect data on bats. These data were then used to create univariate models with focal land use/cover variables using different focal window sizes to detect the optimal species-specific scale of influence for each variable. The large number of selected variables was then used to create ensembles of small models at a 100 m × 100 m resolution, and the resulting habitat suitability maps were transformed into species distribution maps for practitioners. Results:We were able to collect data to model 14 different bat species representing 66% of the Swiss bat diversity, including four red list species. In general, the most important variables were Euclidean distance to road or water, temperature and slope, but there was large variation among species both for the variable importance and for the optimal focal window size. Main conclusion: Our study greatly increased the knowledge of bats in this regionand showed that many of the red list species are nowadays disappearing from the intensively used lowland plains and restricted to the remaining forests along the slopes. Additionally, we highlighted the importance of selecting the variable scale on a species-specific basis accounting for their mobility and range sizes. K E Y W O R D S bioindicators, Continuous Boyce Index, habitat suitability model, multi-scale model, presenceonly model, rare species, Switzerland | 771 SCHERRER Et al.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modelling bat distributions and diversity in a mountain landscape using focal predictors in ensemble of small models

Scherrer

Christe

Guisan

2019

Diversity and Distributions

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Influence of vegetation and abiotic factors on habitat use by insectivorous bats in subtropical mountain forests

et al. 2019

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Variation in diet of frugivorous bats in fragments of Brazil’s Atlantic Forest associated with vegetation density

Oelbaum

Teixeira

Clare

et al. 2022

Journal of Mammalogy

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Species distribution and persistence have long been known to vary with landscape structure; however, continued human activities in altered landscapes raise many questions as to how habitat fragmentation impacts the biology of persistent animal populations. Using carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analysis, we examined interspecific variation in the diet of frugivorous bats among remnant habitat patches of Brazil’s Atlantic Forest. We hypothesized that the diet of individuals captured in habitat patches would be different than those captured in contiguous habitats. We predicted that bats would alter their realized dietary niche breadth, taking food items (i.e., fruits or insects) according to landscape structure. However, more mobile species should be less impacted by small-scale landscape changes. We predicted that (1) a wide-ranging species (Artibeus lituratus), which move through open areas, will be less affected by small-scale landscape attributes, patch size, composition, and isolation; while (2) two narrow-ranging species (Carollia perspicillata and Sturnira lilium) will have more variation between populations in niche breadth and isotopic ratio ranges dependant on the local environment. Using Akaike’s Information Criterion (AIC) to rank a priori selected candidate models to explain variation, we found that fragment composition, largely involving vegetation density rather than spatial aspects of landscape structure (i.e., patch area, isolation) best explained diet variation in frugivorous bats. Additionally, there was evidence that wide-ranging A. lituratus were less impacted by differences in the landscape than narrow-ranging species. This supports the prediction that bats resident to fragments have altered feeding behavior, in response to environmental perturbation.

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Forest Structure and Composition Affect Bats in a Tropical Evergreen Broadleaf Forest

Cited by 3 publications

References 64 publications

Modelling bat distributions and diversity in a mountain landscape using focal predictors in ensemble of small models

Modelling bat distributions and diversity in a mountain landscape using focal predictors in ensemble of small models

Influence of vegetation and abiotic factors on habitat use by insectivorous bats in subtropical mountain forests

Variation in diet of frugivorous bats in fragments of Brazil’s Atlantic Forest associated with vegetation density

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