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Null model analysis on bat species co-occurrence and nestedness patterns in a region of the Atlantic Rainforest, Brazil

  • Luiz Henrique Varzinczak ORCID logo EMAIL logo , Itiberê Piaia Bernardi and Fernando C. Passos
Published/Copyright: March 4, 2015
Mammalia
From the journal Mammalia Volume 80 Issue 2

Abstract

This study aimed to test through null models analysis the co-occurrence and nestedness patterns of bat species in a region of the Atlantic Rainforest. Data from 10 communities were tabulated in presence-absence matrices. Two metrics have been used to test the co-occurrence patterns: C-Score, which calculates the “checkerboard” pattern testing the interspecific competition between pairs of species, and V-Ratio, which calculates the covariance between species. All analyses were performed with EcoSim software. For nestedness analyses, we utilized the NODF metric through the Aninhado software. None of all the C-Score results showed a significant pattern of species association, indicating a higher coexistence among bat species. For V-Ratio, three results indicated nonrandom associations of species. The communities are highly nested, with poor species sites being subsets of richer sites. The diversification in this group allows the coexistence of species, decreasing the niche overlap. Nested pattern is common in mammal communities, and the significance of our results is in accordance with the results of the co-occurrence test. Competitive interactions may lead to differences in abundance of species in communities. However, as the method of bat sampling is considered biased, the results using binary data, as in our study, seems to be the most trustful method.

Keywords: assembly rules; Chiroptera; competition; Lagamar; nested pattern
Corresponding author: Luiz Henrique Varzinczak, Laboratório de Biodiversidade, Conservação e Ecologia de Animais Silvestres, Departamento de Zoologia, Universidade Federal do Paraná, Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil, e-mail: .

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank CNPq (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico) for a scholarship provided to LHV and a grant to FCP (303757/2012-4). CAPES (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior) provided a doctorate scholarship to IPB. We would like to especially thank Gustavo Graciolli for the data from Parque Nacional do Superagui and Maurício O. Moura and Diego R. Bilski for the suggestions provided for the first version of the manuscript.

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Received: 2014-8-17
Accepted: 2015-1-9
Published Online: 2015-3-4
Published in Print: 2016-3-1

©2016 by De Gruyter

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Review
  3. The wild goat, Capra aegagrus Erxleben, 1777, of the island of Montecristo (Northern Tyrrhenian Sea, Italy): does it still exist?
  4. Original Studies
  5. Trophic relationships of sympatric small carnivores in fragmented landscapes of southern Brazil: niche overlap and potential for competition
  6. Dietary adaptation of white-headed langurs in a fragmented limestone habitat
  7. Winter foraging of chinkara (Gazella bennettii shikarii) in Central Iran
  8. Null model analysis on bat species co-occurrence and nestedness patterns in a region of the Atlantic Rainforest, Brazil
  9. Richness and distribution of porcupines (Erethizontidae: Coendou) from Colombia
  10. The level of rodent problems in poultry farms of Rawalpindi-Islamabad, Pakistan
  11. Survival and recruitment of the multimammate mouse, Mastomys natalensis (Smith 1834), in a rice agro-ecosystem
  12. New records of Cryptonanus guahybae (Tate, 1931) in southern Brazil inferred from molecular and morphological data
  13. Short Notes
  14. The wild goat of Montecristo Island: did it ever exist?
  15. First record of a bat from the Lakshadweep archipelago, southwestern India
  16. Status of pinnipeds in Southeast Asia
  17. Breeding habits of the Indian pangolin (Manis crassicaudata) in Potohar Plateau, Pakistan
  18. Litter size and basic diet of brown bears (Ursus arctos, Carnivora) in northeastern Turkey
https://doi.org/10.1515/mammalia-2014-0117
Keywords for this article
assembly rules; Chiroptera; competition; Lagamar; nested pattern

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Review
  3. The wild goat, Capra aegagrus Erxleben, 1777, of the island of Montecristo (Northern Tyrrhenian Sea, Italy): does it still exist?
  4. Original Studies
  5. Trophic relationships of sympatric small carnivores in fragmented landscapes of southern Brazil: niche overlap and potential for competition
  6. Dietary adaptation of white-headed langurs in a fragmented limestone habitat
  7. Winter foraging of chinkara (Gazella bennettii shikarii) in Central Iran
  8. Null model analysis on bat species co-occurrence and nestedness patterns in a region of the Atlantic Rainforest, Brazil
  9. Richness and distribution of porcupines (Erethizontidae: Coendou) from Colombia
  10. The level of rodent problems in poultry farms of Rawalpindi-Islamabad, Pakistan
  11. Survival and recruitment of the multimammate mouse, Mastomys natalensis (Smith 1834), in a rice agro-ecosystem
  12. New records of Cryptonanus guahybae (Tate, 1931) in southern Brazil inferred from molecular and morphological data
  13. Short Notes
  14. The wild goat of Montecristo Island: did it ever exist?
  15. First record of a bat from the Lakshadweep archipelago, southwestern India
  16. Status of pinnipeds in Southeast Asia
  17. Breeding habits of the Indian pangolin (Manis crassicaudata) in Potohar Plateau, Pakistan
  18. Litter size and basic diet of brown bears (Ursus arctos, Carnivora) in northeastern Turkey
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