Abstract

Natural populations are not homogenous systems but sets of individuals that occupy subsets of the species' niche. This phenomenon is known as individual specialization. Recently, several studies found evidence of individual specialization in animal diets. Diet is a critical dimension of a species' niche that affects several other dimensions, including space use, which has been poorly studied under the light of individual specialization. In this study, which harnesses the framework of the movement ecology paradigm and uses yellow-shouldered batsSturnira liliumas a model, we ask how food preferences lead individual bats of the same population to forage mainly in different locations and habitats. Ten individual bats were radiotracked in a heterogeneous Brazilian savanna. First, we modelled intraspecific variation in space use as a network of individual bats and the landscape elements visited by them. Second, we developed two novel metrics, the spatial individual specialization index (SpatIS) and the spatial individual complementary specialization index (SpatICS). Additionally, we tested food-plant availability as a driver of interindividual differences in space use. There was large interindividual variation in space use not explained by sex or weight. Our results point to individual specialization in space use in the studied population ofS. lilium, most probably linked to food-plant distribution. Individual specialization affects not only which plant species frugivores consume, but also the way they move in space, ultimately with consequences for seed dispersal and landscape connectivity.

Keywords

Cerrado; Chiroptera; ecology of individuals; interindividual variation; Phyllostomidae; plant-animal interactions; spatial ecology

Published in

Journal of Animal Ecology
2020, Volume: 89, number: 11, pages: 2584-2595
Publisher: WILEY

SLU Authors

• Brandão Niebuhr Dos Santos, Bernardo

  • Department of Applied Animal Science and Welfare, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    
  • Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação da Biodiversidade (ICMBio)
  • Instituto Pró‐Carnívoros
  • Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP)

UKÄ Subject classification

Ecology


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.13339

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/108259