Effects of Habitat Structure, Plant Cover, and Successional Stage on the Bat Assemblage of a Tropical Dry Forest at Different Spatial Scales

Bats play a fundamental role in ecosystem functioning since they are responsible for several ecological services such as seed dispersal and pollination. Therefore, assessing the effects of habitat structure at different scales on the bat assemblage is extremely important for supporting conservation...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Diversity (Basel) 2018-06, Vol.10 (2), p.41
Main Authors: Falcão, Luiz, Espírito-Santo, Mário, Fernandes, G., Paglia, Adriano
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Abundance
Animal behavior
Bats
Brazil
Chiroptera
Dry forests
Ecological function
Ecological monitoring
Ecological succession
Ecosystem services
Ecosystems
Forests
Fragility
Habitats
Landscape
late forests
natural regeneration
Pollination
Protected areas
Rainforests
secondary succession
Seed dispersal
Tropical forests
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Summary:Bats play a fundamental role in ecosystem functioning since they are responsible for several ecological services such as seed dispersal and pollination. Therefore, assessing the effects of habitat structure at different scales on the bat assemblage is extremely important for supporting conservation strategies. The objective of the present study was to investigate the effects of habitat structure at multiple spatial scales on the bat assemblages and their variation along a gradient of secondary succession in a Brazilian tropical dry forest. Our results suggest that bat abundance is higher in areas close to mature forests, which shows the important role of those habitats as refuges for the regional bat fauna (in a fragmented landscape) and for the maintenance of ecosystem services provided by this group in tropical dry forests in a landscape context. In addition, bat abundance was lower in protected areas whose surroundings were better preserved (greater forest extension). This unexpected finding could result from an altered behavior in areas under a strong influence of a fruit crop matrix. Finally, we showed that the effects of the surroundings depend on the successional stage of the area under analysis. Late forests are more susceptible to variations in the forest cover in their surroundings, which show the higher fragility of these environments.
ISSN:1424-2818
1424-2818
DOI:10.3390/d10020041