Beyond a ‘perfect fit’: the interplay between morphology and spatiotemporal overlap as determinants of microstructure in a bat-flower network

Plant-pollinator interactions in diverse tropical communities are often predicted by a combination of ecological variables, yet the interaction drivers between flower-visiting bats and plants at the community level are poorly understood. We assembled a network between Neotropical bats and flowering plants to describe its macrostructure and to test the role of neutral and niche variables in predicting microstructure. We found a moderately generalized network with internally nested modules comprising functionally similar species. Modules grouped bats and plants with matching degrees of specialization but had considerable overlap in species morphologies and several inter-module interactions. Both morphological specialization and spatiotemporal overlap, not abundance, were the best predictors of microstructure, with functional groups of bats also interacting more frequently with plants in certain vegetation types (e.g., frugivores within forests) and seasons (e.g., long-snouted nectarivores in the dry season). Therefore, flower-visiting bats appear to have species-specific niche spaces delimited not only by their ability to exploit certain flower types but also by preferred foraging habitats and the timing of resource availability. The prominent role of spatial and temporal synchrony likely reflects the heterogeneity of Neotropical savannas, and further research in biomes beyond the Cerrado is needed to better understand the complexity of this system.