ABSTRACT

Urban bats from Guarulhos city: high species richness and dominance of ecologically bats revealed from the rabies monitoring data. Urbanization has impacted bat communities and their ecosystemic services in various regions of the world. However, this impact has been few studied in the Neotropic. In Brazil, although urban bat inventories are scarce, public health organs (e.g., Zoonoses Control Center) perform passive surveillance of infected bats by the rabies virus. These institutions carry out bat identification and collect biologic data essentials to the environment management, population control, ecology, and bat conservation. The present study analyzed bat data (from 2001 to 2017) recorded in Guarulhos city, which integers São Paulo metropolitan region. We compared bat receivement rate, richness, and dominance with other studies. The health surveillance data demonstrated high species richness (n = 29), represented by the three bat families most commonly recorded in Brazilian cities (Phyllostomidae, Molossidadae and Vespertilionidae). Molossus molossus (Pallas, 1766), Glossophaga soricina (Pallas, 1766) and Myotis nigricans (Schinz, 1821) represented most bat data (70%) from Guarulhos city. This dominance can be explained by the diet flexibility (insectivores and non-obligate nectarivores) and shelter occupation in buildings of these species, resources highly available in cities. The understood of the urban characteristics associated with urban bat dominance is important by the provide insights on how to mitigate the impacts of urbanization on the richest regional bat community. Thus, it is recommended that citiesʼ environmental planning consider urbanistic and floristic guidelines as a tool integrated for wild life and public health management, and implement strategies to increase the conservation potential in urban ecosystems.

KEYWORDS.
Chiroptera; urbanization; diet; roosts; buildings