Search

Copyright of Texto & Contexto Enfermagem is the property of Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Programa de Pos-Graduacao de Enfermagem and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Restingas are ecosystems located in the coastal regions of the Atlantic forest, characterized by heterogeneous vegetation of sandy soil. This region has historically come under severe human pressure, and a large portion of these areas have been lost or degraded. The mammalian fauna of restingas is poorly known particularly for bats. This lack of information prevents a better understanding of the biological processes affecting bats and restingas and may severely impair conservation actions. Here we analyze bat species composition, richness, and similarity in 17 restingas sites in Brazil to check whether bat community composition is correlated with geographic distance among sites. We conducted an extensive survey of a published scientific literature to gather data and have a picture of the current knowledge on restinga bats. Until now, 40 bat species are documented in the restingas ecosystems. The richest restinga was in Jurubatiba National Park, and those with the lowest species richness were in Ilha de Cabo Frio, Saquarema, and Barra de Maricá. We found no relationship between geographic distance and dissimilarity on species composition among restingas sites. Although much attention has been paid to sampling this area, it has not been sampled uniformly. In fact, restingas have been undersampled causing a lack of recognition of how important these areas are biologically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We do not have a complete knowledge of the bat species presence in West Central Brazil domain and still do not understand how bats respond to the ecosystems rapid vanishing. We quantified bat diversity in the Parque Estadual de Terra Ronca (PETER), a Cerrado protected area. Additionally, we report an extension of the Hsunycteris thomasi distribution known only in the Amazon and the western portion of Brazil. Over 1.440 m2 h of mist netting and five nights of automatic recording, we recorded five families and 38 species, while the Jackknife first-order estimator predicted the occurrence of 25 species. Besides the register of species for the area, the novelty is the increase in the potential distribution area of H. thomasi in Norwest's and north of the Midwest of Brazil. We also report the presence of at least one Lonchophylla dekeyseri population, an endemic to Cerrado. The lack of bat captures within the cotton plantation suggests the impoverishment of the bat assemblages due to the extensive loss of native habitats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated how the potential distribution of Histiotus velatus is affected by the addition of new records over decades (decade effect). Assuming that (1: hypothesis of the effect of the decade) the addition of new occurrence records over time increases the potential size of the species distribution; and (2: Wallacean distance hypothesis) over the years, the new points added are increasingly distant from the research centers. Considering the geographic knowledge gap of this species, our objective is to report a new record of this species and estimate its potential distribution in South America through environment niche models (ENMs). For this, we compiled records of occurrence of species, selected from 1900 to 2015. We used 19 bioclimatic variables available in the WorldClim database to estimate the potential distribution of the species, and we used three modeling algorithms: Maximum Entropy (MXT), Random Forest (RDF), and Support Vector Machine. To test the Wallacean distance hypothesis, we calculated the Euclidian distance from occurrences to bat research centers in Brazil, located using a national researchers' information dataset ("Plataforma Lattes"). To test the hypothesis of the decade effect, we used the beta regression analysis, taking conservative and non‐conservative approaches. The results showed that the predicted area expanded and retracted with the addition of new occurrences over the decades, with an improvement in the accuracy of models. Most records are located in the southeastern region of Brazil, but algorithms predicted areas in regions where there are no records. Only the conservative approach has had a positive relationship over the decades. The distance from new points does not increase over the years of research centers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One third of Brazil has been converted to human‐modified lands, emphasising the need to understand biodiversity's responses to land‐use changes. To address this issue, we reviewed 53 studies on the effects of land‐use changes on bats in the country from 1990 to 2018. Bats were chosen because they contribute towards numerous ecosystem services, including seed dispersal and insect control.For each study, we obtained data on the biome where fieldwork was conducted, participating institutes, sampling method, sampling effort, main results and academic impact. Spatial scales of studies were divided into 'local', 'fragment', 'landscape' or 'metapopulation'.Our results indicate an increasing interest in bats and land‐use changes in Brazil over time; however, no trend in academic impact factor was found. Studies carried out in the Atlantic Forest were the most common, appearing earlier in the literature, but studies in Amazonia, often from long‐term research, had larger sampling efforts, were published in higher impact factor journals and received more citations.We identified several gaps in the literature: 1) lack of acoustic surveys complementing mist‐netting, 2) telemetry studies were rare, 3) underrepresentation of the Caatinga biome, along with Pantanal and Grasslands (= Pampa), and 4) fewer studies using the landscape and fragment scale than local studies. We suggest that future research should focus on filling those gaps.Bat diversity is often found to be positively related to forest cover, fragment size and natural vegetation. Logging and agroforestry seem to have the lesser impact on bats compared to agriculture and urbanisation. Only haematophagous bats are benefited by pastures.We found guild‐specific responses to land‐use changes. Haematophagous batsseem to be the least impacted by them compared to other guilds, while animalivorous bats are particularly impacted by habitat fragmentation. Facing continuous deforestation, we can expect that bat diversity in Brazil will possibly reduce. Conservation efforts should focus on species shown to be sensitive to land‐use changes, especially where higher deforestation rates are expected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Neotropical Mammalogy / Mastozoologia Neotropical is the property of Sociedad Argentina para el Estudio de los Mamiferos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article presents the study on the differences in the reproductive strategy of different populations of Phyllostomus hastatus. The study involved computer modeling of the viability and dynamics of P. hastatus' reproductive characteristics. The results reportedly revealed that most reproductive scenarios led to viable and stable P. hastatus populations, however polyestrous populations are more resilient to disturbances.

The article reports on the discovery of Lasiurus blossevillii in a restinga ecosystem in Brazil and the second occurrence of the said bat in the state of Espírito Santo, located in the southeastern part of the country. It is noted that these bats are widely distributed in the country, however, there still exists sampling gaps. On February 9, 2007, an adult female Lasiurus blossevillii was caught living in Clusia shrubs habitat. In one restinga, the first observation of the said bat took place 51 years ago, with the specimen being a pregnant female.

• We compared seven methods to include spatial restrictions into species distribution models (SDMs) with traditional ways to model species distribution. • Methods of including spatial layers as explanatory variables in SDMs were called a priori , while methods of overlapping accessible and suitable areas were called a posteriori methods. • Adding spatial restrictions improve the performance of SDMs by reducing overprediction. • A priori methods performed combined with simpler algorithms, such as GLM. • A posteriori methods were efficient reducing overprediction with the exception of one method which increase underprediction. Species distribution models can be affected by overprediction when dispersal movement is not incorporated into the modelling process. We compared the efficiency of seven methods that take into account spatial constraints to reduce overprediction when using four algorithms for species distribution models. By using a virtual ecologist approach, we were able to measure the accuracy of each model in predicting actual species distributions. We built 40 virtual species distributions within the Neotropical realm. Then, we randomly sampled 50 occurrences that were used in seven spatially restricted species distribution models (hereafter called M-SDMs) and a non-spatially restricted ecological niche model (ENM). We used four algorithms; Maximum Entropy, Generalized Linear Models, Random Forest, and Support Vector Machine. M-SDM methods were divided into a priori methods, in which spatial restrictions were inserted with environmental variables in the modelling process, and a posteriori methods, in which reachable and suitable areas were overlapped. M-SDM efficiency was obtained by calculating the difference in commission and omission errors between M-SDMs and ENMs. We used linear mixed-effects models to test if differences in commission and omission errors varied among the M-SDMs and algorithms. Our results indicate that overall M-SDMs reduce overprediction with no increase in underprediction compared to ENMs with few exceptions, such as a priori methods combined with the Support Vector Machine algorithm. There is a high variation in modelling performance among species, but there were only a few cases in which overprediction or underprediction increased. We only compared methods that do not require species dispersal data, guaranteeing that they can be applied to less-studied species. We advocate that species distribution modellers should not ignore spatial constraints, especially because they can be included in models at low costs but high benefits in terms of overprediction reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]