Crops, caves, and bats: deforestation and mining threaten an endemic and endangered bat species (Lonchophylla: Phyllostomidae) in the Neotropical savannas

The Dekeyser's nectar bat (Lonchophylla dekeyseri) is a cave roosting bat endemic to the Brazilian Cerrado that is considered endangered according to the IUCN Red List. Even though it is likely highly threatened, there is no current assessment of its conservation status or the conservation of the caves within its distribution. Additionally, a change in the Brazilian law is causing increasing mining pressures to caves. In order to evaluate L. dekeyseri conservation status and the caves within its distribution, we made an extensive literature review looking for occurrence records within the Cerrado, which we used to generate species distribution model (SDM) to predict its potential distribution and understand the main environmental variables driving its occurrence. We also overlapped its potential distribution map and cave roosting sites with information on protected areas and mining pressures. We found that most of its potential distribution is located in the central portion of Cerrado, with a large proportion of this area already deforested (43.74%) or threatened due to mining (55.83%) between 2000 and 2019. Moreover, a large vegetation proportion around the caves within its potential distribution was already converted to pastures (67.50%) and soybean crops (22.03%). Our results revealed that only a small proportion of the species potential distribution (similar to 4%) and a small share of caves suitable for roosting (similar to 15%) are preserved within strictly protected areas. Thus, we call attention to the need of more strictly protected areas across suitable habitat locations in order to cover a larger proportion of the species potential distribution and the caves it might be using for roosting.