Abstract
Abstract Rio Grande do Norte is one of the smallest states in Brazil but has a rich diversity of ecosystems, including Caatinga vegetation, remnants of Atlantic Forest, coastal habitats, mangroves and large karstic areas with caves. However, its chiropteran fauna is little known, and the state contains conspicuous gaps of information on the occurrence and distribution of bats in Brazil. In order to reduce this information gap, based on a review of scientific literature and regional mammal collections, we list 42 species of bats, including new occurrences for 13 species and discussion on their conservation status. Results show that more than half (54%) of the recorded species are phyllostomid bats, and about one third of the bats in the state roosts in underground cavities. The Caatinga harbored the highest bat richness in the state, including the occurrence of four vulnerable species (Furipterus horrens, Lonchorhina aurita, Natalus macrourus and Xeronycteris vieirai). The Atlantic Forest needs to be more sampled, including mangroves, coastal habitats and areas of Caatinga in the central region of the state (Borborema highlands), which are virtually unsurveyed. Although the recent increase of studies on bats in the state, future studies should complement conventional mistnetting with active roost search and bioacoustical records in order to obtain better data for unraveling the bat fauna of Rio Grande do Norte.
Highlights
About one-quarter of the Brazilian mammal species are bats (Paglia et al 2012), currently comprising 183 known species (Nogueira et al 2014, Feijó et al 2015a, Fischer et al 2015, Moratelli & Dias 2015, Gregorin et al 2016, Rocha et al 2016)
We found 75 published records, of which 38 satisfied our criteria, plus 66 unpublished records (CMAV and Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (UFPE) collections), totalizing 104 bat records included in the final species list (Table 1) from 141 bat records inspected (Table S1, Supplementary Material)
We found records of 50 bat species among the 141 records (Supplementary Materials) and just 42 species according to our criteria for inclusion in the Rio Grande do Norte (RN) list (Table 1)
Summary
About one-quarter of the Brazilian mammal species are bats (Paglia et al 2012), currently comprising 183 known species (Nogueira et al 2014, Feijó et al 2015a, Fischer et al 2015, Moratelli & Dias 2015, Gregorin et al 2016, Rocha et al 2016). Studies on bats in RN slowly began to increase in this century, with new records and distributional expansions (Feijó & Nunes 2010, Barros 2014, Basílio et al 2017), ecology and natural history (Cordero-Schmidt et al 2016, Cordero-Schmidt et al 2017), community diversity (Barros et al 2017, Vargas-Mena et al in press), and subterranean fauna inventories (Ferreira et al 2010); including a bilbliographic review on the bat fauna in northeastern Brazil by Garcia et al (2014) Such studies together have recorded a richness of 38 species of bats in the state
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