DOI: 10.5061/dryad.c59zw3r52
title: Where are the bats? An environmental complementarity analysis in a megadiverse country

description: Aim: Field surveys are necessary to overcome Wallacean shortfalls. The
 task is even more important when human pressure on tropical – megadiverse
 – ecosystems is considered. However, due to financial constraints, spatial
 and temporal prioritization is required. Here we used the concept of
 environmental complementarity to identify non-surveyed regions for bats
 that are environmentally different from other already surveyed regions. We
 highlighted regions in Brazil where field inventories could be conducted
 to locate new occurrences or even new bat species. Location: Brazil.
 Methods: We based our analysis on environmental characterization aiming to
 identify dissimilar regions to those already sampled for bats in Brazil.
 We used 21 environmental variables to characterize 1,531 unique localities
 where bats occur. Then, we applied the parameters of a generalised linear
 model (GLM) to extrapolate the expected values of the environmental
 variables for the entire country. We compared the predicted values of
 localities with newly described bat species occurrence against the values
 for other bat species. Results: We found that sites from which recently
 discovered species were described are environmentally distinct from the
 sites where previously described species occur. Therefore, new occurrences
 and even new species could be found in regions that are environmentally
 dissimilar from those already surveyed. By crossing the model with a human
 footprint map, we defined temporal priorities for field inventories.
 Regions such as the Northern Cerrado and Western Caatinga should be
 surveyed first. Similar approaches could be undertaken for other
 biological groups or regions, allowing the identification of spatial
 congruence and the development of a comprehensive national programme for
 biological field inventories.  Main conclusion: Newly described
 species occurred in environments dissimilar to those previously
 identified, showing that environmental complementarity analysis is a valid
 approach to define priority regions for new bat inventories.
description: We compiled a dataset on Brazilian bat species occurrences based
 on an extensive literature revision, scientific collections belonging to
 our institutions and from the Global Biodiversity Facility - GBIF. The
 list has a total of 181 Brazilian bat species, including the species cited
 by Nogueira et al. (2018), plus four additional species recently
 described: <i>Eumops chimaera</i> Gregorin, Moras, Acosta,
 Vasconcellos, Poma, Santos & Paca 2016, <i>Histiotus
 diaphanopterus</i> Feijó, Rocha & Althoff 2015,
 <i>Lonchophylla inexpectata</i> Moratelli & Dias 2015,
 and <i>Pteronotus alitonus</i> Pavan, Bobrowieck &
 Percequillo 2018. The database was primarily organized by LMSA and
 complemented with records provided by MRJP, MZ and from online databases
 (Global Information Facility – GBIF). We used the package
 <i>rangeBuilder</i> in R to apply a spatial filter to
 eliminate all duplicated coordinates and keeping just one-point
 location.
description: The dataset is available in a csv format composed by four
 columns: species (scientific name), source, long, and lat. The source
 field can have the values “lmsa” (literature and field data compiled by
 Ludmilla M.S. Aguiar), “mjrp” (field data compiled by Maria João Ramos
 Pereira), “mz” (literature and field data compiled by Marlon Zortéa), and
 “gbif” (data obtained from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility –
 GBIF) (https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.9rg5ue). Geographical coordinates are represented in decimal degrees, WGS84 datum.