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Abstract:
Until recently, Afrotropical bat assemblages were considered to show highly impoverished levels of species richness when compared with the Neotropical or Australasian region. This view was held both at the local and regional scale. Contrary to this proposition, I found highly diverse assemblages at two study sites in Ivory Coast, West Africa, using standardized sampling methods including harp traps, mist nets on ground and canopy level, roost search, and acoustic monitoring. Each method produced heavily biased results, both in species composition and relative abundance. Certain species were recorded with a single technique only, consequently complete inventories can only be obtained by combining several techniques. The advantages and shortcomings of each method are compared. I further conclude that previous studies of Afrotropical bat assemblages are far from completion. They suffer from insufficient and non-standardized methods, leading to the previous assumption of impoverished species richness. In this study, I also show that even within a fairly homogeneous habitat some species were exclusively found in particular situations at the micro-scale. I conclude that sampling methods, habitat specificity, and scale dependency strongly influence the results and conclusions of community studies. Further directions in comparing the results obtained at the local scale with patterns at the regional scale are discussed.
