Seasonal influence on the diurnal roosting behaviour of free-ranging Indian flying fox Pteropus giganteus in an urban la
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Seasonal influence on the diurnal roosting behaviour of free-ranging Indian flying fox Pteropus giganteus in an urban landscape, India Kanad Roy 1,2 & Goutam Kumar Saha 1 & Subhendu Mazumdar 3 Received: 24 July 2019 / Accepted: 3 March 2020 # Institute of Zoology, Slovak Academy of Sciences 2020
Abstract Indian flying fox Pteropus giganteus (Brünnich, 1782) is one of the largest fruit bats (Pteropodidae) in the world. However, studies on seasonal variations and influence of weather parameters on diurnal roosting of this species in urban areas are almost non-existent. We carried out this study in a major urban landscape of India to determine which weather parameters influence diurnal roosting behaviours of Indian flying fox. Behavioural data was assessed through scan sampling method. Sleeping, thermoregulatory, locomotion and communicative behaviour, all of which varied significantly, showing highest incidences of sleeping followed by thermoregulatory, locomotion and communicative behaviours. Sleeping was negatively related with thermoregulatory, locomotion and communicative behaviours; thermoregulatory behaviour was positively related with locomotion and locomotion with communicative behaviour. Except sleeping, all other behaviours were positively related to temperature and were higher in summer than winter. Cloud cover negatively influenced sleeping and positively influenced thermoregulatory and locomotion behaviour; humidity negatively influenced thermoregulatory behaviour and rainfall negatively influenced locomotion behaviour of Indian flying foxes. Our findings might be useful for conservation of diurnal roosting sites of fruit bats in many urban landscapes in the recent scenario of changing climate and rapid urbanization throughout the globe. Keywords Chiroptera . Ethology . Communal roosts . Environmental factors
Introduction Bats are the second largest group of mammals in the world comprising of about 1230 species and represents a quarter of total mammal species found in the world (Purohit et al. 2013; Bhandarkar and Paliwal 2014). Old world fruit bats (Chiroptera: Pteropodiformes) have wide distribution and occupy diverse habitats (Pierson and Rainey 1992; Palmer and Woinarski 1999). They are known to be gregarious mammals and form large diurnal aggregations on trees (Kunz 1982; Pierson and Rainey 1992; Evelyn et al. 2004), which may comprise of hundreds to thousands of individuals (Eby 1991; Parry–Jones and Augee 1992).
* Subhendu Mazumdar [email protected] 1
Department of Zoology, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India
2
Present address: Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, India
3
Shibpur Dinobundhoo Institution (College), Shibpur, Howrah, India
Among these fruit-eating bats, 14 species have been reported from India (Kumar et al. 2016) of which Indian flying fox, Pteropus giganteus (Brünnich, 1782), is the most conspicuous and one of the largest bats in the world (Mathur et al. 2012). They are nocturnal and play important ecological services of pollination and seed
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