Dataset Information

Morphology and stable isotope analysis demonstrate different structuring of bat communities in rainforest and savannah habitats.

ABSTRACT: Bats play important ecological roles in tropical systems, yet how these communities are structured is still poorly understood. Our study explores the structure of African bat communities using morphological characters to define the morphospace occupied by these bats and stable isotope analysis to define their dietary niche breadth. We compared two communities, one in rainforest (Liberia) and one in savannah (South Africa), and asked whether the greater richness in the rainforest was due to more species 'packing' into the same morphospace and trophic space than bats from the savannah, or some other arrangement. In the rainforest, bats occupied a larger area in morphospace and species packing was higher than in the savannah; although this difference disappeared when comparing insectivorous bats only. There were also differences in morphospace occupied by different foraging groups (aerial, edge, clutter and fruitbat). Stable isotope analysis revealed that the range of ? 13C values was almost double in rainforest than in savannah indicating a greater range of utilization of basal C3 and C4 resources in the former site, covering primary productivity from both these sources. The ranges in ? 15N, however, were similar between the two habitats suggesting a similar number of trophic levels. Niche breadth, as defined by either standard ellipse area or convex hull, was greater for the bat community in rainforest than in savannah, with all four foraging groups having larger niche breadths in the former than the latter. The higher inter-species morphospace and niche breadth in forest bats suggest that species packing is not necessarily competitive. By employing morphometrics and stable isotope analysis, we have shown that the rainforest bat community packs more species in morphospace and uses a larger niche breadth than the one in savannah.

SUBMITTER: Monadjem A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6304110 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Morphology and stable isotope analysis demonstrate different structuring of bat communities in rainforest and savannah habitats.

Monadjem Ara A Kane Adam A Taylor Peter P Richards Leigh R LR Hall Grant G Woodborne Stephan S

Royal Society open science 20181219 12

Bats play important ecological roles in tropical systems, yet how these communities are structured is still poorly understood. Our study explores the structure of African bat communities using morphological characters to define the morphospace occupied by these bats and stable isotope analysis to define their dietary niche breadth. We compared two communities, one in rainforest (Liberia) and one in savannah (South Africa), and asked whether the greater richness in the rainforest was due to more ...[more]

PMID: 30662720

Similar Datasets

Project description:Marine methane seep habitats represent an important control on the global flux of methane. Nucleotide-based meta-omics studies outline community-wide metabolic potential, but expression patterns of environmentally relevant proteins are poorly characterized. Proteomic stable isotope probing (proteomic SIP) provides additional information by characterizing phylogenetically specific, functionally relevant activity in mixed microbial communities, offering enhanced detection through system-wide product integration. Here we applied proteomic SIP to (15)[Formula: see text] and CH4 amended seep sediment microcosms in an attempt to track protein synthesis of slow-growing, low-energy microbial systems. Across all samples, 3495 unique proteins were identified, 11% of which were (15)N-labeled. Consistent with the dominant anaerobic oxidation of methane (AOM) activity commonly observed in anoxic seep sediments, proteins associated with sulfate reduction and reverse methanogenesis-including the ANME-2 associated methylenetetrahydromethanopterin reductase (Mer)-were all observed to be actively synthesized ((15)N-enriched). Conversely, proteins affiliated with putative aerobic sulfur-oxidizing epsilon- and gammaproteobacteria showed a marked decrease over time in our anoxic sediment incubations. The abundance and phylogenetic range of (15)N-enriched methyl-coenzyme M reductase (Mcr) orthologs, many of which exhibited novel post-translational modifications, suggests that seep sediments provide niches for multiple organisms performing analogous metabolisms. In addition, 26 proteins of unknown function were consistently detected and actively expressed under conditions supporting AOM, suggesting that they play important roles in methane seep ecosystems. Stable isotope probing in environmental proteomics experiments provides a mechanism to determine protein durability and evaluate lineage-specific responses in complex microbial communities placed under environmentally relevant conditions. Our work here demonstrates the active synthesis of a metabolically specific minority of enzymes, revealing the surprising longevity of most proteins over the course of an extended incubation experiment in an established, slow-growing, methane-impacted environmental system.

Dataset Information

Morphology and stable isotope analysis demonstrate different structuring of bat communities in rainforest and savannah habitats.

Publications

Morphology and stable isotope analysis demonstrate different structuring of bat communities in rainforest and savannah habitats.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets