FIGURE 6 Box plot showing differences in relative bite force among bat species and sex. A. lit : Artibeuslituratus. A. pla : A. planirostris. A. and : A. anderseni. A. pha : A. phaeotis. U. con: Uroderma convexum .P. hel : Platyrrhinus helleri and S. gia: Sturnira giannae.
Our results revealed that big-sized nomadic bats, A. lituratus , and A. planirostris differed from the remaining species, as established by post-hoc tests (P <0.001). Furthermore, it was established that A. anderseni and A. phaeotis are significantly different from S. giannae and U. convexum , while these last two species are similar to P. helleri and the small species of Artibeus (Table 3).
Differences between bite force between bat species .
In this study, significant differences in skull morphology and bite strength were observed between species. LSD post-hoc testing provided clustering indicators, the first group consisted of the large nomadic bats, A. lituratus and A. planirostris ; the second by a nomadic species U. convexum; the third formed by the small speciesP. helleri , S. giannae , A. pheotis and the fourth formed by A. anderseni , species that share cranial and corporal features in the third group (Table 4).
Table 3. Significance between pairs of species and relationship of bite force with other traits.