Richness, diversity and abundance of bats from a savanna landscape in central Brazil

Studies on bat ecology and distribution in the Brazilian Cerrado are scarce. Here we describe a bat assemblage from a savanna landscape in central Brazil and explore the richness, diversity, abundance and the influence of habitat and seasonality. We conducted 48 nights of sampling in both dry and wet seasons and in three habitat types. We estimated the richness and diversity indexes. We assessed the influence of habitat and season on species abundance with a generalized linear mixed model. Overall, we captured 254 individuals of 19 species and our effort sampled 90% of the estimated richness. The Phyllostomidae family was the most frequent, with 76.3% of all captures. Carollia perspicillata, Glossophaga soricina and Eptesicus furinalis were the most abundant species with 21.6%, 16.9% and 15.3% of captures, respectively. The Shannon-Wiener diversity index and the evenness were 2.37 and 0.80, respectively. Habitat and season interact to generate the observed abundance. The diversity was higher than what was observed for other bat assemblages in the Brazilian Cerrado. Our results sum up with ones previously described in the literature and highlight the importance of gallery forests for the maintenance of mammalian diversity in this biome. Additionally, the record of Trachops cirrhosus extends its geographic range approximately 300 km westward in the Cerrado.