Abstract
ABSTRACT: The habitat fragmentation modifies the pattern of animal activity. This study aimed to determine the activity pattern of frugivorous bat species in an urban forest fragment in southwestern Amazonia. The study was conducted from August 2013 to September 2014 with 10 mist nets (9m x 2.5m), opened at ground level throughout all the night and totaling 64,800 m².hour/net. Two hundred and sixty-one captures of bats from 28 species were recorded. The period with the highest capture rate and species of bats was the first period of the night (until 00:00). The species with the highest incidence of catches were, in ascending order, Carollia brevicauda (Schinz, 1821), Carollia perpicillata (Linnaeus, 1758), Artibeus planirostris (Spix, 1823), and Artibeus lituratus (Olfers, 1818). The species of Carollia had activity peaks between the first four hours after sunset; they also showed a reduction of its activities during the subsequent hours. The bats of the genus Artibeus presented a pattern of bimodal activity and they do not seem to respond to the effects of fragmentation, since the pattern of bimodal activity was described for studies in fragments and continuous forest. Thus, we suggest that Artibeus has a high adaptive plasticity, and it is able to exploit the resources offered by the environment. Meanwhile, Carollia has two peaks of activity in continuous forest areas, probably this pattern of activity may be related to the spatial distribution of the resources used by these animals.
Highlights
The habitat fragmentation modifies the pattern of animal activity
We aim to examine the pattern of temporal and seasonal activity of Phyllostomidae frugivorous bats of an urban forest fragment in southwestern Amazonia from two perspectives
Recent studies have observed the community of bats from Parque Zoobotânico (Calouro et al, 2010; Santos et al, 2012), and obtained an abundance and species richness lower than our study
Summary
The habitat fragmentation modifies the pattern of animal activity. This study aimed to determine the activity pattern of frugivorous bat species in an urban forest fragment in southwestern Amazonia. The availability and spatial-temporal distribution of resources, and even the type of foraging and body mass of bats, act as factors that determine the pattern of activity of each species (Weinbeer et al, 2006). The phyllostomids bats usually have a standard unimodal activity, with a decrease of the activities from the first hour after sunset (Charles-Dominique, 1991; Bernard & Fenton, 2002) This pattern may vary according to the availability of ripe fruit (Thies & Kalko, 2004). The foraging activity is influenced by the availability of resources, climatic conditions, the risk of predation, the physical condition of the animal, and the reproductive status (Thies et al, 2006) These factors, singly or in combination, limit the foraging activity of bats. In addition to the environmental and biological factors, activity patterns have strong phylogenetic constraints (Kronfeld-Schor & Dayan, 2003), that determine the foraging activity of the species during
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