Bat communities of savanna biome in the Kruger National Park, South Africa

Abstract

Abstract The savanna habitats often harbour abundant and species-rich bat communities. Whether they represent mere ad hoc assemblages of incidentally co-occurring forms or distinct entities integrated by locally specific adaptations and balanced resource partitionings is largely unknown, as are the natural drivers shaping community variation at different spatial scales. An extensive dataset (130,888 acoustic bat records, 31 OTUs) was collected in 60 plots across Kruger National Park (KNP), South Africa; the plots were located (i) at perennial rivers, (ii) at seasonal rivers, and (iii) on dry crests away from any water source. Besides the effect of water availability, distance to campsites, and microgeographic variation on bat community richness and structure, we revealed (i) extensive homogeneity in community structure at local, subregional, and regional scales contrasting to a mosaic between-plot variation, (ii) absence of robust effects of environmental biotic and abiotic predictors on the distribution of individual OTUs and community variation, (iii) nearly identical pattern of habitat preferences in all community members approaching the centroid of KNP habitat variation, and (iv) an exceptionally high degree of community nestedness. These results suggest that the bat community of the KNP savanna biome represents a single entity consistently integrated with a network of coexistence relations that probably arose locally during long savanna history.