Efeitos da insularização sobre a assembleia de morcegos insetívoros aéreos em uma hidrelétrica na Amazônia Central

Abstract

The rise in energetic demand in undeveloped countries is increasing the planning of new hydropower plants in the Amazon basin. Thus, there is an urgent need to increase the knowledge over how this mega-dam projects can affect Amazon biodiversity. Though the fragmentation effects have been extensively evaluated on bat, few gave attention to how bat assemblage are impacted on islands created after the dam reservoir has been filled up. In this study, we evaluated how local and landscape variables effect in the structuration of aerial insectivorous bat assemblages in the islands of the Balbina Hydroelectric Dam reservoir. Bat were sampled using autonomous recording station for five consecutively nights, on 28 forestry islands and 6 mainland plots. Bats were strongly affected by the insularization and the assemblages answered in both landscape and local scale. The high matrix contrast and the habitat quality decay in small islands, added to ecological characteristics of each species, led to aerial insectivorous bat assemblages to have a strong turn over patterns governed by island size.