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Unusual temporal niche overlap in a phytophagous bat ensemble of western Cuba

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2013

Carlos A. Mancina  and
Ivan Castro-Arellano
Carlos A. Mancina
Affiliation:
Departamento de Zoología, Instituto de Ecología y Sistemática, Carretera de Varona km 3.5, Capdevila, Boyeros, Ciudad de la Habana, 10800, Cuba
Ivan Castro-Arellano*
Affiliation:
Department of Biology, Texas State University, 601 University Drive, San Marcos, TX 78666, USA
*
1Corresponding author. Email: ic13@txstate.edu
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Abstract:

We assessed the differences and similarities in diel activities among five phytophagous bat species at two habitats over two seasons within the Sierra del Rosario Biosphere Reserve in Cuba. We characterized temporal patterns of activity and overlap of temporal activity for frugivore and nectarivore bat species (Artibeus jamaicensis, Monophyllus redmani, Phyllonycteris poeyi, Phyllops falcatus and Brachyphylla nana) that occur in tropical evergreen forest sites with distinct altitude and vegetation structure during wet and dry seasons. Capture frequencies using mist-nets of 1180 capture events were the empirical basis for analyses. For each species we compared activity patterns between habitats, between seasons, between males and females, as well as between reproductive and non-reproductive females. We also assessed temporal overlap among each possible pair of species at each habitat and used Monte Carlo simulations to evaluate assemblage-wide temporal niche overlap using a new algorithm, termed Rosario, designed specifically for temporal data. The two habitats had the same species composition and bat diel rhythms tended to be consistent across habitats, seasons and sexes for most bat species. In general bat species pairwise temporal niche overlap was high, and the ensemble-wide temporal overlap was consistently high across habitats and seasons indicating a common constraint for bat activities. Activity peaks of most bat species coincided at 4–5 h after sunset, this being in sharp contrast to other Neotropical bat assemblages at continental sites where activity peaks usually overlap within the first 2 h after sunset. This strong disparity in timing of activity peaks between continental and insular bat assemblages can provide the framework for the generation of hypotheses that explain the potential role of time as a mediator of ecological interactions in bat assemblages.

Keywords

activity patternsChiropterachronoecologycommunity structureCubaniche overlapnull modelSierra del Rosario Biosphere Reservetemporal niche
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Tropical Ecology , Volume 29 , Issue 6 , November 2013 , pp. 511 - 521
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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References

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