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PLoS One
2014 Oct 17;910:e110894. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0110894.
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What story does geographic separation of insular bats tell? A case study on Sardinian rhinolophids.
Russo D
,
Di Febbraro M
,
Rebelo H
,
Mucedda M
,
Cistrone L
,
Agnelli P
,
De Pasquale PP
,
Martinoli A
,
Scaravelli D
,
Spilinga C
,
Bosso L
.
Abstract
Competition may lead to changes in a species'' environmental niche in areas of sympatry and shifts in the niche of weaker competitors to occupy areas where stronger ones are rarer. Although mainland Mediterranean (Rhinolophus euryale) and Mehely''s (R. mehelyi) horseshoe bats mitigate competition by habitat partitioning, this may not be true on resource-limited systems such as islands. We hypothesize that Sardinian R. euryale (SAR) have a distinct ecological niche suited to persist in the south of Sardinia where R. mehelyi is rarer. Assuming that SAR originated from other Italian populations (PES)--mostly allopatric with R. mehelyi--once on Sardinia the former may have undergone niche displacement driven by R. mehelyi. Alternatively, its niche could have been inherited from a Maghrebian source population. We: a) generated Maxent Species Distribution Models (SDM) for Sardinian populations; b) calibrated a model with PES occurrences and projected it to Sardinia to see whether PES niche would increase R. euryale''s sympatry with R. mehelyi; and c) tested for niche similarity between R. mehelyi and PES, PES and SAR, and R. mehelyi and SAR. Finally we predicted R. euryale''s range in Northern Africa both in the present and during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) by calibrating SDMs respectively with SAR and PES occurrences and projecting them to the Maghreb. R. mehelyi and PES showed niche similarity potentially leading to competition. According to PES'' niche, R. euryale would show a larger sympatry with R. mehelyi on Sardinia than according to SAR niche. Such niches have null similarity. The current and LGM Maghrebian ranges of R. euryale were predicted to be wide according to SAR''s niche, negligible according to PES'' niche. SAR''s niche allows R. euryale to persist where R. mehelyi is rarer and competition probably mild. Possible explanations may be competition-driven niche displacement or Maghrebian origin.
Figure 1. Presence records for Rhinolophus euryale (n = 65; black symbols) and R. mehelyi (n = 40; grey symbols) considered for this study.The publicly available map layer was obtained from www.fao.org/geonetwork/srv/en/main.home and the image prepared with the Quantum Gis 2.2.0 Valmiera open source software.
Figure 2. Distribution and colony size on Sardinia for Rhinolophus euryale (left) and R. mehelyi (right).Circle sizes are proportional to colony sizes. Black: nursery colonies; white: hibernacula; grey: other day-roost. Mixed-colour (white + black) symbols correspond to sites used by bats year round for both hibernation and reproduction. The publicly available map layer was obtained from www.fao.org/geonetwork/srv/en/main.home and the image prepared with the Quantum Gis 2.2.0 Valmiera open source software.
Figure 3. Maxent Species Distribution Models (SDM).a: SDM for R. euryale on Sardinia calibrated with Sardinian records only; b: SDM for Rhinolophus euryale on Sardinia calibrated with presence records from Italian populations except that of Sardinia and projected to the island; c: SDM for R. mehelyi on Sardinia calibrated with Sardinian records only; c: binary map for R. euryale on Sardinia calibrated with Sardinian records only; d: binary map for Rhinolophus euryale on Sardinia calibrated with presence records from Italian populations except that of Sardinia and projected to the island; e: binary map for R. mehelyi on Sardinia calibrated with Sardinian records only The publicly available map layer was obtained from www.fao.org/geonetwork/srv/en/main.home and the image prepared with the Quantum Gis 2.2.0 Valmiera and Maxent open source software packages.
Figure 4. Graphical representation of the environmental niches for Rhinolophus euryale.a: Sardinian population; b: other Italian populations. In the example, niche were generated with Principal Component Analysis calibrated on the whole environmental space including the presence records where the species occur.
Figure 5. Maxent SDMs for Rhinolophus euryale calibrated respectively on presence records of bats from Sardinia (left) and from the remaining Italian areas (right) and projected to northern Africa.LGM = Last Glacial Maximum. CCSM = Community Climate System Model; MIROC = Model for Interdisciplinary Research on Climate. The publicly available map layer was obtained from www.fao.org/geonetwork/srv/en/main.home and the image prepared with the Quantum Gis 2.2.0 Valmiera and Maxent open source software packages.
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