Assessment of the effects of forest fragmentation on aerial insectivorous bats in the Amazonian rainforest

Land use change and habitat fragmentation are among the most severe threats to biodiversity, especially in the tropics. In the Amazon, the abandonment of formerly deforested areas allowed the expansion of secondary regrowth, a type of habitat where bats are known to provide important ecosystem services. Amongst them, aerial insectivorous bats have been neglected in most Neotropical studies and remain poorly studied. However, the current upsurge in acoustic technology makes them easy targets to be monitored using ultrasound detectors. The aim of this thesis was to reveal the diversity of aerial insectivorous bats and quantify the effects of forest fragmentation on this ensemble within the Biological Dynamics Forest Fragments Project, a whole ecosystem experiment in the Amazon, currently composed of a mosaic of unflooded rainforest with continuous forest, and forest fragments embedded in a matrix of secondary regrowth. As part of this thesis, the first “Field Guide to the Bats of the Amazon” was published. A custom-built classifier was developed which was able to identify a large proportion of files to sonotype level (with > 90% accuracy), leaving the rest (