A review of folivory by neotropical bats

Abstract

Folivory by bats is done mainly by leaf fractionation, i.e., the chewed leaves are turned into a bolus which is then pressed against these mammals’ palates to obtain the liquid fraction dispensing the fibrous portion. In this work, folivory by neotropical bats was analyzed by carrying out a bibliographic research in Web of Science, Google Scholar, and Capes Periodicals academic databases with the following keywords and combinations: “Folivory" and "Bats"; "Leaves" and "Bats"; "Chiroptera" and "Folivory", for all years available up to 2019. This research returned 25 articles, 65.3% of which were carried out in Brazil. Most of them are occasional (56%), i.e., in which the main object of study was not folivory. Among those, leaf-eating by bats was described for nine species of neotropical bats, and Artibeus lituratus (Olfers, 1818) was the most extensively investigated species. The consumption of leaves by bats was described for 17 plant species. Only two articles pointed out the classes (age, reproductive and sexual) of the bats feeding on leaves; three investigated the foraging time; seven the seasonality; three sought to explain the reasons that contribute to folivory; and only one carried out an analysis of the chemical composition of the leaves. The preference for a determined leaf age was reported in three studies, whereas the folivory site (specific leaf portions preferably consumed) was described in four. Despite the increasing number of studies on folivory, there are still many gaps that limit the understanding of the real role of this behavior in the ecology of neotropical bats.