The implications of food hardness for diet in bats

Abstract

Summary 1.Neotropical bat communities are characterized by a broad species diversity, which can be achieved and maintained only through partitioning of the available resources. 2. Here patterns of trophic resource utilization within a single neotropical savanna bat community are investigated. Moreover, the physical properties of food items (i.e. hardness), its variation with food size, and whether food hardness differs between items consumed by the bats in this community are investigated experimentally. 3. The results show that food hardness increases with the size of the food item, and that distinct differences exist in the amount of force needed to crush different food items (beetles vs other insects vs fruits). 4. Using previously published data on bite forces from species in the same community it is explored whether food hardness may play a role in shaping the diets of the bats in the community. The combined data on bite forces and food hardness indicate that food hardness can both directly and indirectly limit dietary diversity in bats. 5.The results also indicate that dietary specialization may potentially result in a decrease in trophic breadth for some species through its effect on bite performance.

Go big or go fish: morphological specializations in carnivorous bats

“…[30,[54][55][56][57]). These higher bite forces would facilitate prey processing, as prey hardness scales positively with size [58] and carnivorous bats are osteophagous [23,24,26]. Carnivorous bats span almost a sevenfold range in body mass (26-171 g; [20,22]).…”

Frugivoria por morcegos filostomídeos (Chiroptera, Phyllostomidae) em dois remanescentes urbanos de cerrado em Campo Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul

“…Essa relação é determinada em grande parte pelo predomínio de espécies de Piper na alimentação de Carollia spp. na Região Neotropical (Aguirre et al, 2003;Giannini & Kalko, 2004), ressaltado também no Brasil em diversos estudos (e.g. Pinto & Ortêncio-Filho, 2006;Aguiar & Marinho-Filho, 2007;Sato et al, 2008;Brito et al, 2010;Munin et al, 2012).…”

Morphological innovation, diversification and invasion of a new adaptive zone

“…Studies of whole-organism performance in bats have established that bite force is a good measure of feeding performance and that high bite forces allow access to hard foods, including fruits [22,24]. We measured in vivo bite forces at intermediate gape angles from 563 individuals of 39 wild-caught bat species using a piezoelectric force transducer mounted between two bite plates [23,24,52].…”

“…Stenodermatines are unique in that even small species exploit relatively hard fruits, especially figs [22,60,61]. Other frugivorous phyllostomid lineages consume soft fruits and remain species poor (e.g.…”