Key of the echolocation calls of 20 species of bats from southwestern Peru

Abstract

I present an echolocation key and the description of acoustic parameters for 20 species of bats that occur in similar habitats of the Pacific coast and western slopes of the Andes of southern Peru (Arequipa, Moquegua and Tacna departments).

The distribution of these species in habitats and every department is included in the key. The description of the calls in the key, include characters which will make easier the identification both in the field and the Lab. This also includes time and frequency parameters and scaled schematic drawings of the spectrograms. The species are clustered based on their taxonomy, acoustic features and foraging habitat use.

This research will be useful to develop actions to study the activity, distribution and ecology of these taxa, and additionally to concentrate efforts over short ranging species (i.e. Lasiurus arequipae and Eumops chiribaya), new records in the area (i.e. Artibeus fraterculus and Eumops perotis), and threatened or barely known bats (i.e. Tomopeas ravus, Myotis atacamensis, Amorphochilus schnablii, Mormopterus kalinowskii and Platalina genovensium).