Description of a refuge use by phyllostomus hastatus (chiroptera: phyllostomidae) in the Perijá Serranía, La Guajira, Colombia

Abstract

Hastatus Phyllostomus hanger in a wild cashew tree, found in the town of Villanueva, La Guajira department described. Greater spear-nosed bat (Pallas, 1767) is distributed from Belize and Guatemala to northern Argentina (Santos et al., 2003). It is the second largest in America after Vampyrum spectrum bat. In Colombia it is distributed throughout the territory between 0 and 2000 m (Alberico et al., 2000; Solari et al, 2013.). It has been found that this species roost in caves, hollows in trees, termite nests, palm leaves and human constructions (Santos et al., 2003). These bats usually form harems, where a male defends a group of female intrusions by other males (McCracken & Bradbury, 1981). Overall on hangers, females outnumber males by a ratio ranging from 2: 1 to 10: 1 (McCracken & Bradbury 1981), though sometimes as in the study by Costa et al. (2010) the proportion of males can be over 1: 0.04 which according to the authors can be attributed to P. hastatus can roost in pairs, harems or groups of bachelor males. The group of females of the same hanger can be stable over several years (McCracken & Bradbury, 1981), females of these groups foraging together, which probably helps them defend a particular resource and sharing information about rich patches resource (McCracken & Bradbury, 1981; Wilkinson & Boughman, 1998).