The importance of indigenous territories for conserving bat diversity across the Amazon biome

Abstract

rainforest for millennia. How-ever, evaluations of how much biodiversity is governed under Indigenous stewardship are scarce. Here,we integrate geospatial data of officially recognized ITs across the Amazon biogeographic boundarieswith the distribution range of >200 Amazonian bat species, to: (i) assess the potential contribution of ITsfor the conservation of this species-rich mammalian group across the Amazon; (ii) investigate which ITshost the greatest number of bat species; and (iii) analyse how threatened and Data Deficient bat speciesare distributed within the ITs of the nine Amazonian countries. Twenty-two bat species were found tohave >25% of their global distribution range within Amazonian ITs, including many forest-dependentspecies with restricted distribution ranges and a highly threatened or Data Deficient conservation status.Some particularly diverse ITs were found to harbour over half of the known Amazonian bat species, par-ticularly in transboundary areas in the North-western Amazon. At the national level, the highest numberof species with over 25% of their national Amazonian distribution within ITs was found in Peru (145), followed by Brazil (136), Colombia and Ecuador (both with 134). This study reveals the potential role of Indigenous Peoples in Amazonian bat conservation and emphasizes the contribution of their stewardship for maintaining the ecosystems in which some of the most rare and unique bat species are found