Department of Natural Resources Management and Natural Science Research Laboratory of the Museum, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA.
Oecologia. 2022 Mar;198(3):785-799. doi: 10.1007/s00442-022-05137-4. Epub 2022 Mar 8.
Identifying mechanisms that promote coexistence at the local level is enigmatic for many organisms. Numerous studies have indirectly demonstrated that biotic interactions may not cause deterministic patterns reflective of the coexistence of interacting bat species. Nonetheless, demonstration of the partitioning of resources by phyllostomid bats by directly examining diet matrices may illuminate a mechanism of coexistence. I examined the dietary overlap of phyllostomid bats across 23 sites in the Atlantic Forest of South America. I also examined components of beta diversity (turnover and nestedness) of resources among species as well as the degree to which morphology can act as a surrogate for dietary similarity in each community. Bats exhibited high overlap. Nonetheless, dietary beta diversity was more related to turnover than nestedness of items suggesting substantive species-specific affinities. Niche breath and dietary overlap were positively related to the number of species and the number of resources consumed in communities. Accordingly, changes in richness across Atlantic Forest may be facilitated by increases in resources available at the community level. There were positive, yet weak relationships between morphological and dietary distance. The relationship between morphology and diet was invariant relative to geography, species richness, number of dietary resources, average diet breadth and average dietary overlap indicating that in the Atlantic Forest morphology is a consistent surrogate of dietary relationships of species. Atlantic Forest is one of the most anthropogenically modified tropical forests in the world. This in combination with distinct climatic seasonality likely causes higher dietary overlap, weaker ecomorphological relationships and persistence of only the most general bat species.
确定促进局部共存的机制对许多生物来说是一个谜。许多研究已经间接证明，生物相互作用可能不会导致反映相互作用的蝙蝠物种共存的确定性模式。尽管如此，通过直接检查饮食矩阵来展示 Phyllostomid 蝙蝠对资源的划分，可能会阐明一种共存机制。我检查了南美洲大西洋森林 23 个地点的 Phyllostomid 蝙蝠的饮食重叠情况。我还检查了物种之间资源的 beta 多样性（周转率和嵌套性）的组成部分，以及形态在每个群落中作为饮食相似性替代物的程度。蝙蝠表现出高度的重叠。尽管如此，饮食 beta 多样性与项目的周转率比嵌套性更相关，这表明存在实质性的物种特异性亲和力。生态位呼吸和饮食重叠与物种数量和群落中消耗的资源数量呈正相关。因此，大西洋森林中丰富度的变化可能会受到社区层面可用资源增加的促进。形态和饮食距离之间存在正相关但较弱的关系。形态和饮食之间的关系相对于地理、物种丰富度、饮食资源数量、平均饮食广度和平均饮食重叠是不变的，这表明在大西洋森林中，形态是物种饮食关系的一致替代物。大西洋森林是世界上受人为影响最大的热带森林之一。这与明显的气候季节性相结合，可能导致更高的饮食重叠、较弱的生态形态关系和只有最一般的蝙蝠物种得以持续。
