Figure - uploaded by Jenis Patel
Content may be subject to copyright.
A pair of Kerivoula picta roosting under the leaves of Mangifera indica in Gujarat. Photo: Kuldip Gamit.
Source publication
Similar publications
At the end of 2019, a novel coronavirus was identified as the cause of a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan, a city in the Hubei Province of China. This results in an epidemic throughout China, followed by an increasing number of cases in other countries throughout the world. Currently, containment and mitigation measures have intensified and dise...
Citations
... The species has been mainly documented in tropical dry-mixed and lowland wet evergreen forests [3,37,45], and our model predictions for the current range agrees with previous observations. The wide geographic range of K. picta predicted by our ENM is not surprising given its associations with a range of roosting sites (dried and dead leaves, flower clusters) located in different vegetation communities (primary and secondary forests, home gardens, forest plantations) [10,101,102]. Our model predictions on K. malpasi indicates its preference to higher altitudes (>2100 m a.s.l) characterized by low annual temperatures and high precipitation; these model predictions agree with the current consensus on its distribution range being limited to the central highlands [3,37,40]. ...
Bats perform critical ecosystem functions, including the pollination, seed dispersal, and regulation of invertebrate populations. Yet, bat populations are declining worldwide primarily due to habitat loss and other anthropogenic stressors. Thus, studies on bat ecology, particularly on environmental determinants of bat occupancy, are paramount to their conservation. High mobility, nocturnal behavior, and roosting site selection of bats make conventional surveys challenging. Moreover, little is known about geographic distribution, habitat suitability, and responses to climate change among tropical bat species. To bridge these research gaps, we applied ecological niche modeling to two Ceylonese bat species, Kerivoula malpasi and Kerivoula picta, to map their geographic distribution. Seasonal variations in temperature and precipitation were critical environmental predictors of bat distribution in general. Southwestern lowland forests contained the most optimal habitats for the relatively wide-ranging Kerivoula picta, while the central highlands provided the most suitable habitats for the narrow-ranging Kerivoula malpasi. No tangible changes in the highly suitable habitats were evident in response to projected climate change for either species. Yet, the optimal ranges of K. malpasi can become fragmented in the future, whereas the most optimal habitats for K. picta are likely to become spatially contiguous in the future. Habitat availability or fundamental niche alone is insufficient to reliably forecast species persistence, thus we caution against considering these two bat species as resilient to climate change. Our findings will enable the conservation authorities to initiate preemptive conservation strategies, such as the establishment of landscape-scale habitat connectivity and management of buffer zones around conservation lands. We also encourage conservation authorities to employ ecological niche models to map potential species distributions and to forecast range shifts due to climate change.
... Intraspecific colour variation in bats is a widespread phenomenon that has been observed by many field researchers in the tropics. Bat wing membrane colour naturally ranges between species from black, yellow, orange or translucent (Vaughan & Vaughan 1986, Patel et al. 2017, Rydell et al. 2020. Although most intraspecific differences in bat colour patterns have been reported for fur (Uieda 2000, Oliveira & Aguiar 2008, Lucati & López-Baucells 2017, there have also been a few reported cases of intraspecific variation in wing membrane colour (Koopman 1994, Garbutt 2007, Monadjem et al. 2010), but none for the Neotropical region. ...
Although most variation regarding bat colouration has been recorded for fur, there have also been a few bat species for which intraspecific variation in wing translucency has been reported. However, all records are from the Paleotropics, with no cases reported for any bat species in the Neotropics. Here we describe the first case of intraspecific variation in wing translucency for a Neotropical bat species, the lesser ghost bat (Diclidurus scutatus). Two individuals captured hundreds of kilometres away from each other in the Brazilian Amazon forest showed distinct patterns in relation to the degree of their wing translucency. While one individual in the Northeastern Amazon forest had fully translucent wings, the other in the Southern Amazon had whitish opaque wings. We propose three hypotheses to explain this variation, which are related to differences in: (1) light conditions and camouflage in the roost; (2) thermoregulation requirements; and (3) habitat structure relationship with hunting success.
Sri Lanka is considered one of the world's biodiversity hotspots. Although Sri Lanka has a rich diversity of bats, Kerivoula malpasi is the only bat that is endemic to Sri Lanka, where it is represented by only five records. The other known species of Kerivoula in Sri Lanka, Kerivoula picta, is more widely distributed. This study maps the current and historical distributions of the two species. Field observations made from 2016 to 2020 are presented, including 41 new locations for K. picta, which add the northernmost and easternmost records for the species in Sri Lanka. Details from museum specimens of both species are also presented in order to aid future investigations and promote the conservation of these species in the country.
