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Diversity of Malaysian insectivorous bat assemblages revisited

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2014

Lee-Sim Lim ,
Adura Mohd-Adnan ,
Akbar Zubaid ,
Matthew J. Struebig  and
Stephen J. Rossiter
Lee-Sim Lim
Affiliation:
School of Distance Education, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 11800, Penang, Malaysia School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, London E1 4NS, UK
Adura Mohd-Adnan
Affiliation:
Faculty of Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 UKM Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia
Akbar Zubaid
Affiliation:
Faculty of Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 UKM Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia
Matthew J. Struebig*
Affiliation:
Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology, School of Anthropology and Conservation, University of Kent, Canterbury CT2 7NR, UK
Stephen J. Rossiter
Affiliation:
School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, London E1 4NS, UK
*
1Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract:

To what extent tropical forest persisted in the Malay-Thai Peninsula during the Last Glacial Maximum, or contracted southwards with subsequent post-glacial expansion, has long been debated. These competing scenarios might be expected to have left contrasting broad spatial patterns of diversity of forest-dependent taxa. To test for a post-glacial northward spread of forest, we examined latitudinal clines of forest-dependent bat species at 15 forest sites across Peninsular Malaysia. From captures of 3776 insectivorous forest bats, we found that low richness characterized the north of the study area: predicted richness of 9–16 species, compared with 21–23 in the south. Predicted species richness decreased significantly with increasing latitude, but showed no relationship with either seasonality or peninsula width. Analyses of beta-diversity showed that differences between communities were not related to geographical distance, although there was evidence of greater differences in species numbers between the most distant sites. Assemblages were consistently dominated by six cave-roosting species from the families Rhinolophidae and Hipposideridae, while another 16 species were consistently rare. We suggest that these observed patterns are consistent with the hypothesized northward expansion of tropical rain forest since the Last Glacial Maximum, but emphasize that more surveys in the extreme north and south of the peninsula are required to support this assertion.

Keywords

alpha diversitybeta diversityChiropteracommunity structurePalaeotropicsSouth-East Asiaspecies richnesstropical forest
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Tropical Ecology , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , March 2014 , pp. 111 - 121
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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