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BACKGROUND: Most tropical and subtropical plants are biotically pollinated, and insects are the major pollinators. A small but ecologically and economically important group of plants classified in 28 orders, 67 families and about 528 species of angiosperms are pollinated by nectar-feeding bats. From a phylogenetic perspective this is a derived pollination mode involving a relatively large and energetically expensive pollinator. Here its ecological and evolutionary consequences are explored. SCOPE AND CONCLUSIONS: This review summarizes adaptations in bats and plants that facilitate this interaction and discusses the evolution of bat pollination from a plant phylogenetic perspective. Two families of bats contain specialized flower visitors, one in the Old World and one in the New World. Adaptation to pollination by bats has evolved independently many times from a variety of ancestral conditions, including insect-, bird- and non-volant mammal-pollination. Bat pollination predominates in very few families but is relatively common in certain angiosperm subfamilies and tribes. We propose that flower-visiting bats provide two important benefits to plants: they deposit large amounts of pollen and a variety of pollen genotypes on plant stigmas and, compared with many other pollinators, they are long-distance pollen dispersers. Bat pollination tends to occur in plants that occur in low densities and in lineages producing large flowers. In highly fragmented tropical habitats, nectar bats play an important role in maintaining the genetic continuity of plant populations and thus have considerable conservation value.

Data papers and open databases have revolutionized contemporary science, as they provide the long-needed incentive to collaborate in large international teams and make natural history information widely available. Nevertheless, most data papers have focused on species occurrence or abundance, whereas interactions have received much less attention. To help fill this gap, we have compiled a georeferenced data set of interactions between 93 bat species of the family Phyllostomidae (Chiroptera) and 501 plant species of 68 families. Data came from 169 studies published between 1957 and 2007 covering the entire Neotropical Region, with most records from Brazil (34.5% of all study sites), Costa Rica (16%), and Mexico (14%). Our data set includes 2571 records of frugivory (75.1% of all records) and nectarivory (24.9%). The best represented bat genera are Artibeus (28% of all records), Carollia (24%), Sturnira (10.1%), and Glossophaga (8.8%). Carollia perspicillata (187), Artibeus lituratus (125), Artibeus jamaicensis (94), Glossophaga soricina (86), and Artibeus planirostris (74) were the bat species with the broadest diets recorded based on the number of plant species. Among the plants, the best represented families were Moraceae (17%), Piperaceae (15.4%), Urticaceae (9.2%), and Solanaceae (9%).Plants of the genera Cecropia (46), Ficus (42), Piper (40), Solanum (31), and Vismia (27) exhibited the largest number of interactions. These data are stored as arrays (records, sites, and studies) organized by logical keys and rich metadata, which helped to compile the information on different ecological and geographic scales, according to how they should be used. Our data set on bat–plant interactions is by far the most extensive, both in geographic and taxonomic terms, and includes abiotic information of study sites, as well as ecological information of plants and bats. It has already facilitated several studies and we hope it will stimulate novel analyses and syntheses, in addition to pointing out important gaps in knowledge. Data are provided under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Please cite this paper when the data are used in any kind of publication related to research, outreach, and teaching activities.

How are ecological systems assembled? Identifying common structural patterns within complex networks of interacting species has been a major challenge in ecology, but researchers have focused primarily on single interaction types aggregating in space or time. Here, we shed light on the assembly rules of a multilayer network formed by frugivory and nectarivory interactions between bats and plants in the Neotropics. By harnessing a conceptual framework known as the integrative hypothesis of specialization, our results suggest that phylogenetic constraints separate species into different layers and shape the network’s modules. Then, the network shifts to a nested structure within its modules where interactions are mainly structured by geographic co-occurrence. Finally, organismal traits related to consuming fruits or nectar determine which bat species are central or peripheral to the network. Our results provide insights into how different processes contribute to the assemblage of ecological systems at different levels of organization, resulting in a compound network topology. Using a conceptual framework known as the integrative hypothesis of specialization, the authors suggest that phylogenetic constraints separate species into different layers and shape the modules of a Neotropical network composed of the frugivorous and nectarivorous interactions between bats and plants.

How are ecological systems assembled? Here, we aim to contribute to answering this question by harnessing the framework of a novel integrative hypothesis. We shed light on the assembly rules of a multilayer network formed by frugivory and nectarivory interactions between bats and plants in the Neotropics. Our results suggest that, at a large scale, phylogenetic trade-offs separate species into different layers and modules. At an intermediate scale, the modules are also shaped by geographic trade-offs. And at a small scale, the network shifts to a nested structure within its modules, probably as a consequence of resource breadth processes. Finally, once the topology of the network is shaped, morphological traits related to consuming fruits or nectar determine which species are central or peripheral. Our results help understand how different processes contribute to the assemblage of ecological systems at different scales, resulting in a compound topology.

This dissertation examines the ecology of nectar-feeding bats (Phyllostomidae: Glossophaginae) and the plants that rely on them for pollination. The major findings, based on a thorough review of the literature and field studies in French Guiana, are that (1) 360 plant species from 44 families in the New World and 168 plant species from 41 families from the Old World have been reported to rely on bats for pollination; (2) during a two-year study, three sympatric glossophagine species in a lowland site in central French Guiana visited a total of 14 plant species, 6 of which had not previously been reported in the diets of bats, for nectar/pollen; (3) 10 of 14 plant species were visited by both of the two most common glossophagine species (Anoura geoffroyi and Lionycteris spurrelli ) at the site, but the proportions in which they were found in the bats' diets varied significantly to the point that a canonical discriminant analysis and logistic regression analysis showed that A. geoffroyi and L. spurrelli had distinct diets; (4) these differences may be attributed to a lack of fit between the flower and visiting bat or to flower constancy and differences in foraging behavior; (5) A. geoffroyi and L. spurrelli differed in their responses to seasonal changes in resources with individuals of L. spurrelli visiting significantly more plant species each night in the dry than in the wet season, while those of A. geoffroyi did not show any variation between seasons; (6) the three glossophagine species at the study site fed on insects year-round; (7) females of A. geoffroyi and L. spurrelli gave birth to one pup per year in the dry season, though the population of A. geoffroyi appeared to have a more synchronized birthing period; (8) lactating females of A. geoffroyi were twice as likely to be captured carrying their young than those of L. spurrelli; and (9) the levels of morphological specialization and functional contribution were not found to be correlated in 23 glossophagine bats suggesting that both must be used when developing conservation priorities. This study improves our understanding of how sympatric glossophagine species partition their shared resources and sheds light on the feeding and reproductive habits of poorly known species, such as Lionycteris spurrelli, that are necessary for assessing threats and developing conservation plans.