Species loss in fragile insular communities can alter the composition and stability of local assemblages. Climate change or anthropogenic pressures are sometimes attributed to the loss of Caribbean bats, but other factors are elusive to document. We studied time-scaled changes in bat assemblage composition from a palaeontological excavation in Cueva Matos, Puerto Rico. Over 800 individual fossils were identified to species, and charcoal was used to develop an AMS14C chronology. Although three bat species live in the cave today, fossils comprise 10 species. These included five extirpated species from the cave and three no longer present on the island. Losses centred around 2460–4470 kya. Notably, we document the first record ofMormoops megalophyllaas extirpated from Puerto Rico. Nearly 90% of the extirpated bats in Cueva Matos prefer to roost in hot caves where temperatures may reach 40℃. However, these temperatures are currently not held in any cave chamber. Our findings suggest that structural changes in the cave resulted in the loss of heat traps and likely led to a sudden shift in the bat assemblage composition at this cave, which is now void of hot cave specialist bats. 
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                            DarkCideS 1.0, a global database for bats in karsts and caves
                        
                    
    
            Abstract Understanding biodiversity patterns as well as drivers of population declines, and range losses provides crucial baselines for monitoring and conservation. However, the information needed to evaluate such trends remains unstandardised and sparsely available for many taxonomic groups and habitats, including the cave-dwelling bats and cave ecosystems. We developed the DarkCideS 1.0 ( https://darkcides.org/ ), a global database of bat caves and species synthesised from publicly available information and datasets. The DarkCideS 1.0 is by far the largest database for cave-dwelling bats, which contains information for geographical location, ecological status, species traits, and parasites and hyperparasites for 679 bat species are known to occur in caves or use caves in part of their life histories. The database currently contains 6746 georeferenced occurrences for 402 cave-dwelling bat species from 2002 cave sites in 46 countries and 12 terrestrial biomes. The database has been developed to be collaborative and open-access, allowing continuous data-sharing among the community of bat researchers and conservation biologists to advance bat research and comparative monitoring and prioritisation for conservation. 
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                            - Award ID(s):
- 2127290
- PAR ID:
- 10323732
- Author(s) / Creator(s):
- ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; more »
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Scientific Data
- Volume:
- 9
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2052-4463
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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