The perils of picky eating: dietary breadth is related to extinction risk in insectivorous bats.

ABSTRACT: Several recent papers evaluate the relationship between ecological characteristics and extinction risk in bats. These studies report that extinction risk is negatively related to geographic range size and positively related to habitat specialization. Here, we evaluate the hypothesis that extinction risk is also related to dietary specialization in insectivorous vespertilionid bats using both traditional and phylogenetically-controlled analysis of variance. We collected dietary data and The World Conservation Union (IUCN) rankings for 44 Australian, European, and North American bat species. Our results indicate that species of conservation concern (IUCN ranking near threatened or above) are more likely to have a specialized diet than are species of least concern. Additional analyses show th

SUBMITTER: Boyles JG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1914379 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature