Journal
RESTORATION ECOLOGY
Volume 23, Issue 5, Pages 681-689Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/rec.12235
Keywords
Artibeus jamaicensis; Carollia species; landscape tree cover; Phyllostomidae; Sturnira lilium; tropical forest restoration
Categories
Funding
- Moore Family Foundation
- Bing Ecology and Conservation Graduate Fellowship
- National Science Foundation [NSF-DEB 09-18112]
- Direct For Biological Sciences [1456520] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Division Of Environmental Biology [1456520] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Neotropical fruit bats (family Phyllostomidae) facilitate forest regeneration on degraded lands by dispersing shrub and tree seeds. Accordingly, if fruit bats can be attracted to restoration sites, seed dispersal could be enhanced. We surveyed bat communities at 10 sites in southern Costa Rica to evaluate whether restoration treatments attracted more fruit bats if trees were planted on degraded farmlands in plantations or island configurations versus natural regeneration. We also compared the relative influence of tree cover at local and landscape spatial scales on bat abundances. We captured 68% more fruit bat individuals in tree plantations as in controls, whereas tree island plots were intermediate. Bat activity also responded to landscape tree cover within a 200-m radius of restoration plots, with greater abundance but lower species richness in deforested landscapes. Fruit bat captures in controls and tree island plots declined with increasing landscape tree cover, but captures in plantations were relatively constant. Individual species responded differentially to tree cover measured at different spatial scales. We attribute restoration effects primarily to habitat structure rather than food resources because no planted trees produced fruits regularly eaten by bats. The magnitude of tree planting effects on fruit bats was less than previous studies have found for frugivorous birds, suggesting that bats may play a particularly important role in dispersing seeds in heavily deforested and naturally regenerating areas. Nonetheless, our results show that larger tree plantations in more intact landscapes are more likely to attract diverse fruit bats, potentially enhancing seed dispersal.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available