Premium
Diversidad y Abundancia de Murciélagos como Indicadores de Perturbaciones en Selvas Húmedas Neotropicales
Author(s) -
Medellín Rodrigo A.,
Equihua Miguel,
Amin Miguel A.
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
conservation biology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.2
H-Index - 222
eISSN - 1523-1739
pISSN - 0888-8892
DOI - 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2000.99068.x
Subject(s) - rainforest , disturbance (geology) , vegetation (pathology) , ecology , species richness , abundance (ecology) , geography , habitat , species diversity , relative species abundance , biodiversity , biology , medicine , paleontology , pathology
Evaluating the degree of disturbance of any region to determine its relative importance for conservation purposes requires procedures that are relatively inexpensive and that yield accurate results fast. Because bats are abundant, diverse, and easy to sample, especially in the Neotropical rainforest, they fulfill several of the requirements of indicator species as identified in the literature. For 10 months we sampled bat communities in the Selva Lacandona in Chiapas, Mexico, at 15 sites representing five habitats. We also measured 10 variables representing vegetation structure and diversity at each site. With fuzzy‐set techniques we produced a gradient classification of disturbance for the 15 sites based on the vegetation data. We explored the relationship between vegetation conditions, described as the membership degrees in the construct “fuzzy forest set” (the complementary fuzzy set of “disturbance”), and four bat community variables. Bat species richness, number of rare bat species, and the bat diversity index were positively correlated with the vegetation scores, and relative abundance of the most abundant bat species was negatively correlated with vegetation scores. A high number of phyllostomine species in a community is a good indicator of low levels of disturbance. Although a single indicator group will probably not be sufficient for decision‐making processes in conservation, evaluating bat populations may be a good first step in assessing an area's conservation value, especially in rainforest regions.