Editorial: Human impacts on bats in tropical ecosystems: sustainable actions and alternatives

• Autor(a) principal: Bobrowiec, Paulo Estefano D.
• Data de Publicação: 2024
• Outros Autores: Carvalho, William Douglas, Rainho, Ana, Webala, Paul W., Aguiar, Ludmilla M. S.
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10451/61806

Globally, the most extraordinary biodiversity is in the tropics, spread in a great diversity of vegetation types and habitats. Among the myriad mammalian groups, bats stand out for their remarkable taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity (Wilson and Mittermeier, 2019). Within the tropics, bats can be found in different vegetation types varying in a gradient of structural complexity from dense ancient forests to more open landscapes and woodlands in the savannas and fields (Meyer et al., 2004; Carvalho et al., 2021). Bats provide essential ecosystem services such as seed dispersal and pollination of the many plants that have a role in the income of the most impoverished human populations and the formal economy (Lacher et al., 2019). Moreover, as voracious insect predators, bats play a vital role in suppressing agricultural pests, an invaluable service in this part of the world, and disease vectors for humans (Aguiar et al., 2021; Tuneu-Corral et al., 2023). It is widely recognized that the main threat to bats globally is the extensive conversion of natural ecosystems, especially in tropical developing countries (Meyer et al., 2016). This shift in land use results in habitat loss and environmental degradation, with consequent loss of species, ecosystem services, and lineages (Frick et al., 2020; Atagana et al., 2021; Colombo et al., 2023). There is thus an urgent need to disseminate correct information about bats and explore best practices for mitigating the adverse effects stemming from human activities such as vegetation clearing for cattle ranching, agriculture, human settlements, and urbanization. Therefore, in this Research Topic, we aimed to bring together current research that assesses the influence of multiple environmental transformation drivers on the diversity of tropical bats. Nine papers were published in this Research Topic, and they present novel insights into how bats react to human-driven environmental changes and address significant gaps in bat conservation. These studies were conducted by 36 authors in six countries across the American, African and Asian continents (Figure 1). While the sampling was local in seven studies, Brasileiro et al. used data spanning Brazilian biomes, and Xavier et al. carried out a global systematic review. Three key themes emerge from the papers presented in this Research Topic, and we discuss the findings and knowledge gaps related to each theme in the following sections. Figure 1