Estructura de la comunidad de murciélagos en un paisaje antropogénico tropical en Veracruz, México

The vehicular flow impacts the vertebrate community through the collision of specimens, but the effect that the light intensity and noise of vehicles generates on the structure of the bat community in tropical forests is still unknown. The objectives of the study were i) to describe the structure of the bat community and ii) to relate the monthly wealth and abundance of the bat community with respect to vehicular flow in a fragment of medium sub-evergreen forest in the central zone of Veracruz, Mexico. At km 11 of the Cordoba-Veracruz highway, monthly monitoring was carried out for three nights for six months, bats were captured with fog nets and classified by species and trophic guild. The community structure was described with the effective number of species and compared between monitoring sites. With a regression test, monthly bat abundance and richness were related to vehicular flow to test the association between these variables. With 19,170 h / net, 127 individuals from two families, nine genera and 12 species were captured. The effective numbers of species were not significantly different between sites and the regression analysis showed no effect of vehicular flow on the richness and monthly abundance of bats. Noise and light intensity caused by vehicles has a minimal impact on bat populations, as there are no changes in the structure of the community.