Habitat Use by Aerial Insectivorous bat in shoreline areas of Barro Colorado Nature Monument, Panama
Barboza-Marquez, KathrinAguirre, Luis FPérez-Zubieta, José CKalko, Elisabeth K. V
Aerial insectivorous bats represent almost half of the bat diversity in the Neotropics. They use mainly echolocation (active or passive) to find their prey and contribute to pest control and herbivory reduction. We assessed the structure of the community of aerial insectivorous bats in four microhabitats (upper and lower forest edge, and upper and lower open space) through acoustic sampling in shoreline areas of Barro Colorado Nature Monument, Panama. Seven sites were chosen for sampling, each was visited four times, and bat recordings were taken during four consecutive hours per site each time. We found differences among species in foraging microhabitat, and a tendency of some species to be associated with particular microhabitats. During search calls, species that preferred forest edges (e.g., Saccopteryx bilineata) produced high frequency echolocation calls of short duration, short pulse intervals, and a combination of components of frequency modulation (FM) and quasi-constant frequency (QCF). On the other hand, species that preferred open spaces (e.g., Diclidurus albus) produced echolocation calls with low frequency, long duration, long pulse intervals, and QCF combined with FM components. Differences between guilds are explained by foraging strategy, and some bats prefer the upper stratum while others the lower stratum. This result provides important information on resource partitioning in aerial insectivorous bat communities, as well as on the importance of having a standard protocol to improve the use of acoustic monitoring.(AU)