PARENT SESSION
Contributed Oral Session 44: Mammal Ecology: Seals, Deer, and Bats
Tuesday, August 9, 8:00 AM - 11:30 AM, Meeting Room 518 C, Level 5, Palais des congrès de Montréal
Going beyond presence/absence data: Neotropical bat communities as a case study.
Hice, Christine*,1, Velazco, Paul2, Brown, Carson1, Brown, James1, 1 Department of Biological Sciences, Albuquerque, NM, USA2 Department of Biological Sciences, Chicago, IL, USA
ABSTRACT- Complete inventories of mammals are notoriously difficult to obtain at neotropical lowland rainforest sites. This hinders our ability to understand processes governing the patterns of diversity that occur in this species-rich biome. I present an inventory of bats from a site in the western Amazon Basin, the Reserva Nacional Allpahuayo-Mishana (RNAM). A total of 63 species of bats were recorded in 1 year of field collections. Based on ecogeographic range data (regional species richness) the inventory was approximately 60% complete. Based on extrapolation methods that estimate local species richness, the inventory was 85-90% complete. Analysis of faunal similarity based on presence/absence data indicated the bat fauna of RNAM is most similar to that of geographically proximal sites. To gain a tropical perspective of chiropteran diversity in Amazonia and move beyond this over-simplification of an extremely diverse community, data from RNAM and 10 other neotropical sites with published inventories were used to compare and contrast community structure from both taxonomic and functional perspectives using several different methods. In addition, the relationship between local and regional species richness was examined. These analyses revealed several trends. Primarily, the relationship between community similarity using abundance data and geographic distance was much less pronounced than when based on presence/absence data. However, this relationship was stronger when based on functional groups versus taxonomic identity. Finally, ecological filters of different strengths are functioning in different regions of the Amazon Basin, with strong filters in the western region and weak filters in the Guianas. Possible underlying processes for these patterns will be discussed.
Key words: Chiroptera, Faunal similarity, Community similarity, Ecological filters