Diferentes partes da comunidade de morcegos exibem diferentes respostas funcionais à elevação

Abstract

Functional ecology is dedicated to study of how characteristics of organisms are related with ecological processes that they perform in the ecosystem level. Many studies had been made in this perspective in order to verify how the diversity of these characteristics affect the realization of these processes, and how this diversity reflects in the colonization ability of organisms and communities structuration. In this dissertation, it was evaluated how distinct sub-parts of a bat community changes in an elevational gradient, in relation to their functional diversity and traits. Traits used were referent to wing and diet characteristics, and are related with different ways of bats explore space and resources. These sub-parts were divided based on ways these species explore the environment, and were called here as understorey and openspace bats. For understorey bats sampling, mist-nets were used, between 18:00 at 00:00h, where each individual catched had their functional traits measured. For open space bats, an ultrasound detector was used, and functional traits of registered species were obtained in the literature. Generalized linear models were used to evaluate the relation between functional metrics of each group and the elevation. The results found show that functional diversity decreases with elevation for only one of the sub-parts of community. For functional trait metrics, each sub-part showed a distinct response to elevation, and relationship between a specific trait and elevation could be found for both or only one of the sub-parts. These results suggest that elevation causes different selective pressures on each sub-part of the community, and the same functional trait (ex. flight sustainability-related characteristics) can be selected in different directions for each one. This study reinforces the importance of lead in account the functional heterogeneity of studied communities, since different response patterns can be observed for organisms that explore the environment in different ways, what by their turn reflects on the capacity and the way how each group is affected by environmental variations.