Diversidade de morcegos (Mammalia, Chiroptera) em um mosaico de paisagens na Reserva Ecológica de Guapiaçu, RJ, Sudeste do Brasil

Abstract

The Brazilian Atlantic Forest is one of the most threatened ecosystems on the planet and home to one of the greatest biodiversity known among terrestrial ecosystems. This biome is an important ecosystem for mammals and in some areas bat communities can represent more than half of all local diversity of mammals. Given the variety of feeding habits, ecological interactions and abundance in the Atlantic Forest of Rio de Janeiro, the analysis of bat communities becomes crucial to support management plans for several areas. Despite the Rio de Janeiro is one of the states best sampled for bats, many sites were not satisfactorily sampled and we still have a scarce understanding about the dynamics of bat communities in different landscapes. Between May 2011 and July 2014, we performed 72 sampling nights in six different land use sites in the Reserva Ecológica de Guapiaçu, municipality of Cachoeiras de Macacu, metropolitan region of the State of Rio de Janeiro, southeastern Brazil. We used 10 mist-nets of 9x3m open overnight (average of 12 hours a night) with a total capture effort of 233.280 m².h. We divided this dissertation into two chapters. In the first, based on the data obtained and literature, we suggest some guidelines for the sampling design of bats inventories showing the importance of each guideline to maximize success in sampling bats in the Atlantic Forest of southeastern Brazil. In the second chapter, we investigated the differences in species richness, abundance and trophic guilds among the six land use sites sampled and discuss the distribution of species between them. We captured 1821 bats distributed into three families: Phyllostomidae (25 species), Molossidae (three species) and Vespertilionidae (six species). Two other species of two families, Noctilionidae and Thyropteridae, were recorded by direct observation (no capture), totaling 36 species of bats for Reserva Ecológica de Guapiaçu. Fruit bats accounted for 82.7% of the captures. We recorded the highest species richness in disturbed areas (22 species) and continuous forest edge (21 species) while the lowest was in continuous forest (13 species) and the small fragment (10 species). We found the same trend for the trophic guilds. We recorded seven guilds for the altered area and the edge of the forest, while only five in continuous forest and three small fragment. The non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) and cluster analysis, both with Bray-Curtis dissimilarity, showed the separation of land use sites in different groups depending on the degree of change in the landscape.