Structure and natural history of an assemblage of bats from a xerophytic area in the Caatinga of northeastern Brazil

Abstract

The Caatinga biome is restricted to Brazil, and its bat fauna is among the least studied in South America, with scarce information on species occurrence, distributions, and structure of assemblages. Moreover, most of the information available on bats from this biome comes from relicts of other ecosystem formations. From 2010 to 2012 we conducted bat surveys in different sites along the Serra da Jitirana, a xerophytic locality in the Caatinga of Piauí state, northeastern Brazil. We recorded 20 species in six families. Representatives of animalivorous guilds predominated in both the number of individuals and species. We speculate that the low numbers of frugivores is a response to the environmental constraints imposed by the drought. Along with an analysis of this assemblage, we also report here new information on roosts, behavior, and feeding items for several species about which little is yet known.

The heterogeneity of Caatinga biome: an overview of the bat fauna

“…Cluster analyses were based on the Euclidean distance and evaluated (1) bat species composition in each of the eight ecoregions, and (2) bat species composition in the ecoregions that have been more effectively surveyed. In this analysis, studies that investigated chiropterans more broadly in each ecoregion carried out by highly experienced researchers were selected, namely Guerra (2007) and Sá-Neto and Marinho-Filho (2013) for SSD; Fabián (2008) and Piccinini (1974) for NSD; Novaes and Laurindo (2014) and Novaes et al (2015) for IAC; and Silva (2007), who investigated chiropteran diversity in two areas in BOH. Cluster analyses were computed using the Past software.…”

Myotis riparius (Chiroptera: Vespertilionidae)

“…Myotis riparius is widely distributed in the Neotropics, occurring from southern Honduras southward into all South Myotis riparius has been found in lowland and upland tropical rainforests, deciduous forests, savannas, xerophytic caatinga, pampa grasslands, and anthropic environments, such as agricultural fields and pastures (LaVal 1973;Muñoz-Arango 2001;Aguirre 2007;Novaes et al 2015). Moreover, the species is not known for the Alto Chaco (Wilson 2008).…”

“…It occurs along a wide elevational range (from sea level to 2,000 m), and different habitats such as tropical rainforests, savannas, and xerophytic formations, as well as environments with different levels of human disturbance (LaVal 1973;Muñoz-Arango 2001;Aguirre 2007;Novaes et al 2015). In French Guiana, M. riparius showed a strong association with primary forests, with a preference for preserved habitats (Simmons and Voss 1998).…”

Bats (Mammalia, Chiroptera) from an area of Caatinga in southwestern Bahia, Brazil

“…A predominance of insectivorous bats in the Caatinga has been observed in the states of Piauí (Gregorin et al 2008;Novaes et al 2015), Ceará (Willig & Mares 1989;Novaes & Laurindo 2014) and Paraíba (Zeppelini et al 2017). In the present study, the insectivorous guild was abundant in the diurnal roosts, although no Molossus molossus were captured in the mist nets.…”