Efeito de borda sobre a estrutura de comunidade de morcegos em floresta de terra-firme, Amazônia Central

Abstract

In the brazilian Amazon region, most of the forests have suffered losses and changes within the years, as the result of human activities such as deforestation and construction of highways. These actions create edge environments in old-growth forests that are subject to intrinsic effects that influence both the abiotic as the biotic part. This study investigated the frequency of capture, structure and communities composition of bats responding to edge effects in tropical rain forest. The study was conducted at Fazenda Experimental da UFAM and surrounding areas located at highway BR-174, Central Amazonia. In 50 Nights (2100 nethours), 401 bats were captured, 30 species in five families: Phyllostomidae (24 spp.) Emballonuridae (2 spp.), Thyropteridae (1 sp.), Mormoopidae (1 sp.) and Vespertilionidae (2 spp.). Of these species, 10 represent 91.48% of the catch. Carollia spp. was the specie with the highest total number of catches (62.07%), and there was a greater difference in the frequency of capture in the border environment. Artibeus concolor, Artibeus gnomus, Artibeus obscurus, Rhinophylla pumilio, Pteronotus parnellii, Sturnira tildae, Phyllostomus discolor and Lonchophylla thomasi did not differ in the frequencies of capture in environments edge and interior forest. Phyllostomus elongatus was more frequent in the interior than on the edge. The technique of non-metric Multidimensional Scaling (NMDS), has shown that there is a well-marked separation between the frequencies of catches of 10 species and occurrence data for the environment and the inside edge of forest. These proved to be heterogeneously distributed between the two environments. The frugivorous, belonging to the subfamilies Carollinae and Stenodermatinae were captured and the most that showed differences in the frequency of capture in the border environment. Insectivore-gatherers were the second most frequently captured guild, but no differences between the environments, as well as airinsectivores, nectarivores and sanguinivorous. We concluded that with the first results of this work, we can begin to understand how the edge effect acts in the community structure and composition of bats species to some areas of forest in Central Amazonia