CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Phyllostomid bats belong to the most ecologically diverse family within the order Chiroptera, including taxa that variously feed on insects, fruit, pollen, nectar, leaves, vertebrates, and blood. The cranial diversity, the variety of life-histories and the long period of evolutionary diversification make phyllostomids an attractive group to investigate the evolution of complex characters. Although recent detailed anatomical descriptions of skull morphology are available for Pteropus (Megachiroptera), no such descriptive work exists for phyllostomid bats (Microchiroptera). This family remains essentially unexplored with respect to the anatomical description of skull morphology as well as hypotheses testing individual bones homology. The aim of our work is to establish hypotheses of homology for the skull bones of phyllostomid bats. Here, we chose to focus our analysis on some phyllostomid species with different dietary habits. These species are well represented in Museu de Zoologia da Universidade de São Paulo. We established 34 homologous skull landmarks for each species from different dietary groups. These set of landmarks are well established in other groups of mammals studied in our laboratory and reflects important developmental/functional relationships among cranial structures. They are positioned at the intersection of sutures or other discrete and homologous cranial features. Because adult bats are characterized by a relatively complete fusion of cranial bones, we used young individuals as a model to define and understand the structures of bones and sutures in adults. This study provides information and establish homology hypotheses for the skull morphology of phyllostomid bats. These efforts represent a first step as part of a larger project in which our focus is to understand the evolution of cranial morphology in New World leaf-nosed bats and the potential evolution of the relationships among traits.

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