Bats and Bat Flowers in a West African Rainforest Community

Little information exists on what plants Africa’s only nectar specialized bat, Megaloglossus woermanni feeds on, and to what extent other forest dwelling bats utilize nectar. Accordingly, little is known of how the resources are distributed in time and space, and how the plants display the rewards, factors presumably affecting the foraging strategies of the visitors. The aim of this thesis was to fill some of this gap and explore the interactions between bats and bat flowers in a West African rain forest community, in Ta{\"ı national park (Ivory Coast).Bats were caught in five permanent plots and presence of pollen in the fur and feces were scored. Before release the bats were marked using a ball chain with an individual number. Flowering phenology for five bat-pollinated tree species in the area was recorded and their density estimated by line transect and square samplings. In order to characterize the floral scent, the floral odour of eight West African bat pollinated plants species was characterized by in situ head space collection and GC-MS analyses.Of seven regularly occurring pteropodid species, nectar and pollen was important to only the nectar specialist Megaloglossus woermanni and the opportunistic fruit and nectar feeding Myonycteris torquata. Six plant species accounted for 98% of all pollen findings and Parkia bicolor, Maranthes aubrevillei and M. glabra were equally visited by M. torquata and M. woermanni. Flowers of three other species were mainly or only visited by M. woermanni. The plant species flowered sequentially and most species were mass flowering. Anthocleista nobilis was the only tree flowering through out the year, and is suggested to be a keystone species in this area for M. woermanni during periods of low food availability.The floral scent of the eight investigated species neither shared any specific compounds nor any other discernible pattern in their floral scent composition. Most of the identified compounds are common in the floral scent of species pollinated by a variety of animals. Adansonia digitata (Bombacaceae) was the only African species found to have a substantial amount of sulphur compounds in its floral scent. This feature contrasts with the New Worlds bat-pollinated plants, which frequently contain these compounds. Flowers of Ceiba pentandra (Bombacaceae), native to both South America and Africa, did not contain any sulphur substances in the floral scent, unlike a previous study in the New World, in which the major floral scent constituents were sulphur compounds. We suggest that the differences in the floral scent of C. pentandra, including the absence of sulphur compounds in the African variety, result from the different selective regimes exerted by the flower visiting Pteropodidae bats in Africa and Phyllostomidae bats in the New World, respectively.The two smallest resident bat species in the area, the nectarivorous M. woermanni and the frugivorous Scotonycteris zenkeri, showed the highest site fidelity over extended periods, indicating residency in rather small areas. M. torquata appears to have low site fidelity, but stays in the local area. The two migrating species, and the largest resident species were never recaptured.