Ecologia evolutiva de uma metacomunidade de morcegos na Serra da Bodoquena - Brasil

Abstract

The loss of native cover and changes in natural landscapes have rapidly grown in recent decades, mainly due to anthropic causes, such as urban expansion, agriculture, and livestock. The Brazilian Cerrado is no exception as a region with the highest production of soybean, corn, and meat. Despite being the savannah with greatest biodiversity in the world, it is one of the most threatened biomes, because only 6.5% of its native vegetation is within Protected Areas. Morphology-Environment relationships can determine species distributions in communities, but land use change can potentially modify this relationship, altering ecosystem functions and contributing to species loss. However, little is known about how landscape changes affect the morphospace in vertebrate communities and if an organism shape can help predicting their responses to disturbances. Given the great diversity of shapes related to the exploration of environments and resources, bats are an ideal group to investigate the evolutionary and ecological processes that may influence metacommunity assembly. The main goals of this Dissertation were 1) to test how size, trophic guild, and foraging strategy influenced the skull and jaw shape at a regional scale; and 2) to test how landscape composition and structure bat influence the distribution of bat wing shape at the metacommunity scale. We sampled bats and environmental variables in 20 local communities in the Serra da Bodoquena, Midwest Brazil. To quantify skull, jaw, and wing shape of 32 bat species, we obtained 2D images in the field and from museum specimens. To determine ecological and behavioral factors, we reviewed the literature and classified species into five trophic guilds and three foraging strategies. To quantify landscape structure and composition of each community, we used 1 km, 3 km, and 5 km buffers and calculated forest edge, percentage of forest cover, savannah, fragments, and agriculture. In chapter 1, we showed that closely related species were clustered in the phylomorphospace; skull allometry followed a common trajectory, and not to trophic guild and foraging behavior, probably related to olfactory-visual senses. However, jaw shape followed unique trajectories, suggesting differential pressures related to trophic guild and foraging behavior. In chapter 2, we found a positive effect at different spatial scales in relation to functional redundancy with forest cover, number of patches, percentage of savannah and agriculture, and a smaller effect on functional dispersion at a finer scale. This may suggest a functional homogenization driven by land use.