<p>Landscape changes are a major driver of biodiversity loss worldwide, and projections indicate that these activities will intensify in the coming years. This highlights the importance of understanding how organisms respond to such modifications, particularly those that are still understudied, such as aerial insectivorous bats (hereafter, simply ‘bats’) in the Neotropics. In this study, we tested: (1) whether changes in land cover and connectivity affect bat species richness, community- and guild-level foraging activity (navigation and prey search), and community-level feeding activity (prey pursuit and capture); and (2) whether individual species within the community exhibit different patterns of foraging activity in response to these modifications. We conducted acoustic monitoring across 12 areas within a human-modified region in Brazil and tested our hypotheses using generalized linear models and latent class analyses. The bat community was affected by the percentage of forest cover at the 1.5&#xa0;km scale, with more forested areas supporting higher species richness. The landscape did not affect community-level foraging or feeding activities, but it did influence the foraging activity of certain species. We identified three response groups to changes in forest cover in the landscape. Two groups were positively affected by this variable to varying degrees, while one group (comprising 70% of the community) was not affected by forest cover. Our findings suggest that, although bats are relatively tolerant to landscape modifications, they benefit from the preservation of natural habitats, as preserved landscapes support higher species richness and increased foraging activity in some species. This study also underscores the importance of investigating species-specific responses to environmental changes, as focusing solely on the community- or guild-level responses may obscure critical patterns.</p>

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Forest cover promotes species richness and activity of Molossidae and Vespertilionidae bats in an anthropized landscape in Brazil

  • Matheus Camargo Silva Mancini,
  • Luiz Alberto Dolabela Falcão,
  • Letícia Langsdorff,
  • Lucas Laboissieri Del Sarto,
  • Renato Gregorin

摘要

Landscape changes are a major driver of biodiversity loss worldwide, and projections indicate that these activities will intensify in the coming years. This highlights the importance of understanding how organisms respond to such modifications, particularly those that are still understudied, such as aerial insectivorous bats (hereafter, simply ‘bats’) in the Neotropics. In this study, we tested: (1) whether changes in land cover and connectivity affect bat species richness, community- and guild-level foraging activity (navigation and prey search), and community-level feeding activity (prey pursuit and capture); and (2) whether individual species within the community exhibit different patterns of foraging activity in response to these modifications. We conducted acoustic monitoring across 12 areas within a human-modified region in Brazil and tested our hypotheses using generalized linear models and latent class analyses. The bat community was affected by the percentage of forest cover at the 1.5 km scale, with more forested areas supporting higher species richness. The landscape did not affect community-level foraging or feeding activities, but it did influence the foraging activity of certain species. We identified three response groups to changes in forest cover in the landscape. Two groups were positively affected by this variable to varying degrees, while one group (comprising 70% of the community) was not affected by forest cover. Our findings suggest that, although bats are relatively tolerant to landscape modifications, they benefit from the preservation of natural habitats, as preserved landscapes support higher species richness and increased foraging activity in some species. This study also underscores the importance of investigating species-specific responses to environmental changes, as focusing solely on the community- or guild-level responses may obscure critical patterns.