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Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter October 30, 2020

Post-fire phyllostomid assemblages in forest patches of the Pantanal wetland

  • Carolina F. Santos ORCID logo EMAIL logo , Reinaldo C. Teixeira , Josué Raizer and Erich Fischer ORCID logo
From the journal Mammalia

Abstract

We report on phyllostomid assemblages just after a wildfire and again three months later across burned and unburned forest patches. We recorded 10 species throughout the fire disturbance gradient, mainly determined by changes in the understory. Burned patches presented high abundance of predator bats right after fire, including gleaning insectivorous, carnivorous, and sanguivorous. Three months later, burned forests were empty of predators and dominated by large frugivores that occurred throughout the whole gradient in both periods. The fire appears to create ephemeral opportunity to predator phyllostomids right after its passage, but subsequent vegetation recovery seems to reduce diversity in burned forests.


Corresponding author: Carolina F. Santos,Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ecologia e Conservação, Instituto de Biociências, Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul, 79070-900Campo Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, E-mail:

Award Identifier / Grant number: 3035/2011

Award Identifier / Grant number: 06345/2019-6

Acknowledgments

The study was done under IBAMA license (1865036).

  1. Author contribution: All the authors have accepted responsibility for the entire content of this submitted manuscript and approved submission.

  2. Research funding: The authors thank EMBRAPA for support, CAPES for a grant to CFS (3035/2011), and CNPq for a grant to EF (06345/2019–6).

  3. Conflict of interest statement: The authors declare no conflicts of interest regarding this article.

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Received: 2020-04-14
Accepted: 2020-09-29
Published Online: 2020-10-30
Published in Print: 2021-03-26

© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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