Theodore H Fleming

University of Miami | UM · Department of Biology

Illinois): University of Chicago Press. $65.00. ix + 470 p. + 8 pl.; ill.; subject and taxonomic indexes. ISBN: 978-0-226-69612-6 (hc); 978-0-226-69626-3 (eb). 2020. The family Phyllostomidae, New World leaf-nosed bats, represents a large adaptive radiation of the Order Chiroptera, encompassing a wide diversity of forms throughout much of the Ameri...

This book discusses in detail the adaptive radiation of American leaf-nosed bats (Phyllostomidae), the most diverse family morphologically, behaviorally, and trophically of all bats. It is divided into five major sections that cover the family’s evolution, classification, and historical biogeography; many aspects of its basic biology; its trophic,...

ABOUT THIS BOOK With more than two hundred species distributed across most of mainland Mexico, Central and South America, and islands in the Caribbean Sea, the Phyllostomidae bat family (American leaf-nosed bats) is one of the world’s most diverse mammalian families in terms of its trophic, or feeding, diversity. From an insectivorous ancestry, ex...

The Neotropical region harbors the world's most diverse terrestrial plant communities. A key component of this diversity is a range of plant– animal interactions involving frugivory, nectarivory, and insectivory. Millions of Neotropical hectares subjected to human land-use systems contain trees that are either planted by land managers or retained f...

Nectar-feeding bats show morphological, physiological, and behavioral adaptations for feeding on nectar. How they find and localize flowers is still poorly understood. While scent cues alone allow no precise localization of a floral target, the spatial properties of flower echoes are very precise and could play a major role, particularly at close r...

3D flight path reconstruction data. (XLSX)

Frugivorous fish play a prominent role in seed dispersal and reproductive dynamics of plant communities in riparian and floodplain habitats of tropical regions worldwide. In Neotropical wetlands, many plant species have fleshy fruits and synchronize their fruiting with the flood season, when fruit-eating fish forage in forest and savannahs for peri...

In this paper we briefly review the evolutionary history of the mutualistic interaction between angiosperms that produce fleshy fruits and their major consumers: frugivorous birds and mammals. Fleshy fruits eaten by these vertebrates are widely distributed throughout angiosperm phylogeny. Similarly, a frugivorous diet has evolved independently many...

Includes full results from the migrate and bayesass analyses, as well as negative log likelihood for the structure and baps analyses. (DOC)

Observed patterns of genetic structure result from the interactions of demographic, physical, and historical influences on gene flow. The particular strength of various factors in governing gene flow, however, may differ between species in biologically relevant ways. We investigated the role of demographic factors (population size and sex-biased di...

Ecosystem services are the benefits obtained from the environment that increase human well-being. Economic valuation is conducted by measuring the human welfare gains or losses that result from changes in the provision of ecosystem services. Bats have long been postulated to play important roles in arthropod suppression, seed dispersal, and pollina...

Theodore Fleming has been a professional biologist for over 40 years. For most of his career, he has studied ecological interactions between seed- and/or pollen-dispersing phyllostomid bats and their food plants in Latin America. His seed dispersal studies were conducted in tropical forests in Costa Rica between 1970 and 1986. Theodore’s pollen dis...

The islands of the West Indies are home to 56 species of bats, half of which are endemic to the region. Recently, researchers have begun to characterize the echolocation calls of the bat fauna of the West Indies. However, the majority of species have not yet been characterized and no studies have been conducted on most West Indian islands, includin...

We studied the population dynamics of the zebra longwing butterfly, Heliconius charithonia (Nymphalidae), in a 0.05 ha garden in Miami, Florida, for 2 years to answer the following questions: (1) How stable is a suburban, subtropical population of this widespread neotropical butterfly? (2) What are the major factors influencing its population dynam...

Background: Most tropical and subtropical plants are biotically pollinated, and insects are the major pollinators. A small but ecologically and economically important group of plants classified in 28 orders, 67 families and about 528 species of angiosperms are pollinated by nectar-feeding bats. From a phylogenetic perspective this is a derived pol...

The second largest order of mammals, Chiroptera comprises more than one thousand species of bats. Because of their mobility, bats are often the only native mammals on isolated oceanic islands, where more than half of all bat species live. These island bats represent an evolutionarily distinctive and ecologically significant part of the earth’s bi...

Polygyny and promiscuity are the 2 most common mammalian mating systems, whereas monogamy and lek mating are rare. Mammalian mating systems are thought to be influenced by the amount of paternal investment required, defensibility of females, and the stability and size of female groups. With some notable exceptions, male bats typically make no pater...

We used nitrogen isotope analysis from pectoral muscle of the Egyptian fruit bat Rousettus aegyptiacus (Chiroptera: Pteropodidae) to determine intrapopulation variation in sources of dietary protein throughout the year in northern Israel. In Mediterranean climates, winter and summer are stable seasons, whereas spring and fall are transitional seaso...

Strong hurricanes can cause population reductions in West Indian birds and bats, but the genetic consequences of such reductions have not been documented. For three species of phyllostomid bats, we report on the genetic effects of three strong hurricanes that struck the northern West Indies in 2004. Hurricane Ivan devastated Grand Cayman and severe...

Aim We review several aspects of the structure of regional and local assemblages of nectar‐feeding birds and bats and their relationships with food plants to determine the extent to which evolutionary convergence has or has not occurred in the New and Old World tropics. Location Our review is pantropical in extent and also includes the subtropics o...

We developed 12 polymorphic microsatellite loci for the buffy flower bat (Erophylla sezekorni) and 10 loci for Waterhouse's big-eared bat (Macrotus waterhousii). In E. sezekorni, we tested 65 individuals from three islands, Cuba, Exuma, and Abaco. Mean number of alleles per locus was 10.7 (range 5-20). In M. waterhousii, we tested 39 individuals fr...

This study presents data on the roosting and feeding behaviour of Pied Wagtails around Oxford, England. During the winter of 1977–78, from two to 1200 wagtails roosted in a Phragmites reed-bed. Use of this roost was greatest during mild, windless weather and the birds apparently used alternate roosts during harsh weather. Movement between roosts so...

Discussion of successional change has traditionally focused on plants. The role of animals in producing and responding to successional change has received far less attention. Dispersal of plant propagules by animals is a fundamental part of successional change in the tropics. Here we review the role played by frugivorous bats in successional change...

Organ pipe cactus (Stenocereus thurberi) is one of three species of bat-pollinated columnar cacti that co-occur along the Gulf Coastal region of the Sonoran Desert in northwestern Mexico. Its relatively long flowering season (April-July) overlaps broadly with those of cardon (Pachycereus pringlei) and saguaro (Carnegiea gigantea), but peak flowerin...

Non-random statistical patterns have long been of interest to community ecologists. Recent studies of communities of mutualists have revealed non-random patterns in terms of connectance, degree of specialization, and nestedness. Currently unstudied, however, are the detailed statistical relationships between tropical vertebrate mutualists and their...

New World nectar-feeding vertebrates occur primarily in the mammalian family Phyllostomidae (subfamilies Glossophaginae and Phyllonycterinae with a total of about 34 species) and the avian family Trochilidae (about 330 species). In this paper we compare and contrast patterns and processes in the community structure of these two groups to identify e...

As a basis for determining how vertebrate frugivores influence the evolution of tropical fruits, we investigated distribution patterns of different fruit traits that are known to influence frugivore food choice, drawing on data gathered from 626 plant species in a primary tropical rainforest at Xishuangbanna, SW China. Species with fleshy fruits ar...

Columnar cacti in tropical deserts depend on nectar-feeding bats for their reproduction while species from extra-tropical deserts show a relatively generalized pollination system with both nocturnal and diurnal pollinators. Pachycereus pecten-aboriginum is a columnar cactus with a broad distribution along the Pacific coast of México, from Oaxaca to...

Along with the Melastomataceae, Rubiaceae, and Solanaceae, shrubs and treelets of the Piperaceae (primarily Piper) are numerically dominant members of the understories of many Neotropical forests. This dominance occurs both in number of species and number of individuals. Gentry and Emmons (1987) reported that Piper species richness ranged from 0.3...

Glossophaga longirostris and Leptonycteris curasoae are nectar-feeding bats associated with arid zones in northern South America. Despite their close phylogenetic relationship, sympatric condition and niche similarities, morphological and ecological evidence suggest that these species differ in dispersal capabilities. Using mitochondrial DNA, we te...

From 50% to >90% of tropical shrub and tree species (depending on habitat) rely on fruit-eating vertebrates to disperse their seeds, and a substantial portion of the high diversity of tropical mammalian and avian faunas results from the evolution of fruit-eating species. This review examines whether parallel diversity trends existing different taxo...

We conducted allozyme surveys of three Venezuelan self-incompatible chiropterophilous columnar cacti: two diploid species, Stenocereus griseus and Cereus repandus, and one tetraploid, Pilosocereus lanuginosus. The three cacti are pollinated by bats, and both bats and birds disperse seeds. Population sampling comprised two spatial scales: all Venezu...

Previous studies have shown that the nectar-feeding bat, Leptonycteris curasoae, is the major pollinator of Pachycereus pringlei (cardon), a columnar cactus whose populations are either gynodioecious or trioecious in the Sonoran Desert. On the basis of evidence of pollinator limitation in females and low flower visitation rates, a hypothesis has be...

We used stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses to test the hypothesis that nectar-feeding bats Leptonycteris curasoae and Glossophaga longirostris depend on cacti and agaves as food sources in Venezuelan arid zones and to compare their trophic positions. We measured the isotopic compositions of muscle tissue in the 2 species during 1 year at 3...

Distinguishing the historical effects of gene migration and vicariance on contemporary genetic structure is problematic without testable biogeographic hypotheses based on preexisting geological and environmental evidence. The availability of such hypotheses for North America's Sonoran Desert has contributed to our understanding of the effect of his...

Specialization of a plant on a particular pollinator may not evolve if co-pollinators are effective and abundant. This is particularly evident if fruit set is resource limited and cannot be increased above the levels produced by the actions of co-pollinators. The pollinating seed-consuming interaction between senita cacti and senita moths in the So...