Abstract
The greatest current threat to terrestrial fauna is continuous and severe landscape modification that destroys and degrades animal habitats. This rapid and severe modification has threatened species, local biological communities, and the ecological services that they provide, such as seed dispersal, insect predation, and pollination. Bats are important pollinators of the Cerrado (woodland savanna) because of their role in the life cycles of many plant species. However, there is little information about how these bat species are being affected by habitat loss and fragmentation. We used radio-tracking to estimate the home ranges of Glossophaga soricina (Pallas, 1776) and Lonchophylla dekeyseri Taddei, Vizotto & Sazima, 1983. The home range of G. soricina varies from 430 to 890 ha. They combine shortrange flights of up to 500 m to nearby areas with longer flights of 2 to 3 km that take them away from their core areas. The maximum flight distance tracked for L. dekeyseri was 3.8 km, and its home range varies from 564 to 640 ha. The average distance travelled by this species was 1.3 km. Our data suggest that G. soricina and L. dekeyseri are able to explore the fragmented landscape of the Central Brazilian Cerrado and that they are likely to survive in the short- to medium-term. The natural dispersal ability of these two species may enable them to compensate for continued human disturbance in the region.
Highlights
Habitat destruction and the associated degradation are the greatest threats to terrestrial fauna
Our data suggest that G. soricina and L. dekeyseri are able to explore the fragmented landscape of the Central Brazilian Cerrado and that they are likely to survive in the short- to medium-term
Habitat loss impacts 86% of threatened mammals (BAILLIE et al 2004), and there is no indication that landscape transformation is diminishing, especially in the Cerrado, which is a Brazilian biome that currently has a high level of industrial agriculture
Summary
Habitat destruction and the associated degradation are the greatest threats to terrestrial fauna. More than 50% of its land has been lost to pasture and cropland (KLINK & MACHADO 2005, BRASIL 2009a) This rapid and severe landscape modification has threatened many species, which in turn has affected local biological communities and the ecological services that they provide, including seed dispersal, insect predation, and pollination. Bats are seemingly unaffected by small changes in landscape structure because of their ability to fly, but contradictory results have been reported in the literature (FENTON 1997, GORRENSEN et al 2005) Part of this contradiction can be explained by the species-dependent nature of responses to landscape change (GORRENSEN et al 2005). Phyllostomids in French Guiana and Panama were reluctant to traverse open spaces that
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