Abstract
ABSTRACT The Amazonian basin harbours some of the most bat-diverse ecosystems worldwide. Yet, information on elusive, high-flying bat species such as Molossidae is scarce or virtually missing in the literature, which hampers conservation efforts both locally and globally. The recent advent of new technologies specifically designed to survey bats, such as passive ultrasound detectors and acoustic lures, has significantly increased understanding of bat ecology and distribution, and has allowed researchers to gather new and valuable information which was impossible to collect in the past. We undertook a rapid bat diversity assessment in French Guiana using acoustic lures to aid in capturing high-flying insectivorous bat species. Here we report the second and third capture record of Promops centralis (Chiroptera, Molossidae) for French Guiana, captured after 28 years since the first and only captures so far in the county. One individual was a post-lactating female and represents the first record of breeding P. centralis in French Guiana. We provide (i) morphometric and acoustic data (including the species’ distress calls) as well as detail photography to aid in species identification; and (ii) COI and CytB sequences of the two individuals (first mitochondrial sequences for French Guiana).
Highlights
Harbouring a rich diversity of habitats, including the tropical Amazonian forest, French Guiana represents a hotspot of bat diversity
The advent of new techniques for surveying bats such as the use of bioacoustics is currently pushing forward our understanding of bat ecology and distribution (Britzke et al 2013; Gibb et al 2019), allowing the discovery of new species and opening ecological research questions and fields that were entirely inaccessible in the past
We captured 450 individuals belonging to 40 bat species, including two individuals of Promops centralis
Summary
Harbouring a rich diversity of habitats, including the tropical Amazonian forest, French Guiana represents a hotspot of bat diversity. The development of ultrasonic acoustic lures to attract bats to the mist-nets has gained momentum amongst bat researchers and naturalists (Quackenbush et al 2016; Samoray et al 2019), especially for targeting elusive insectivorous species. Their effectiveness has been proven in different contexts and for several species (Hill and Greenaway 2005; Lintott et al 2013; Quackenbush et al 2016), acoustic lures have been rarely used in the tropics (Chaverri et al 2018)
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