Assessing the Effects of Urbanisation on Bats in Recife Area, Atlantic Forest of Brazil

Abstract

AbstractThe metropolitan area of Recife has 4.1 million inhabitants and is in one of the most deforested areas of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. Here, few forest fragments remain in a large urban matrix. How do bats interact with this complex and challenging landscape? Focusing on insectivores, we used bioacoustics to (1) assess which bats use green spaces in Recife, (2) evaluate the effect of intense artificial light at night (ALAN) on bat activity, and (3) compare molossids’ activity and behaviour in urban and non-urban areas. Although with fewer species when compared to forested areas, we show that several insectivores can persist in that urban matrix. However, these species make a heterogeneous use of the landscape: green spaces were hotspots for bat activity with nearly 2.4 times more activity than non-green spaces. We also identified that ALAN from soccer (football) stadiums influences not only the total activity of insectivores but also their temporal activity patterns. However, this influence was stadium-specific with no pattern common to all stadia, pointing to a more complex interaction between species and ALAN. Finally, we show that urbanisation influences the activity and behaviour of urban molossids. We found a significant decrease in total activity in the urban environment but found that urban molossids are active earlier in the night compared to non-urban molossids. Our studies provide evidence of some of the effects of urbanisation on insectivorous bats in a large city among the remains of the Atlantic Forest in Northeastern Brazil, and we highlight the need for more local research and conservation action.Keywords Artificial light at night (ALAN) Bioacoustics Green urban remnantsUrban fauna