On the shoulder of giants: how to go further in the study of bat-plant interactions
A. R. Mello, Marco
Adriano Peracchi and other pioneers made the first investigations about the diet of Brazilian bats, and so they paved the way for studies on bat-plant interactions in the country. To honor their work we should avoid reinventing the wheel: if we stand on the shoulders of those giants, maybe we can see at a greater distance. The most important step towards this advancement is to put Brazilian research on bat-plant interactions into more interesting theoretical frameworks. After fine-tuning the countrys research to the international scientific effort, we can use a promising but overlooked treasure: datasets accumulated since the 1960s and published in papers and monographs. Brazilian researchers have already published some innovative studies on bat-plant interactions. However, this is only the beginning. I present in this paper some opportunities to go further.