Patrones biogeográficos de los murciélagos de Argentina: riqueza de especies y congruencia distribucional

Biogeographic patterns of the bats of Argentina: species richness and distributional congruence. Currently 67 species of bats are recognized for the fauna of Argentina. Notwithstanding the geographical records of the species are well documented, their distributional patterns on a national scale have not been studied so far. In this study, we analyze all the validated records, in order to identify patterns of species richness and distributional congruence. The highest species richness was located in the Paraná forest (northeast) and the Yungas forest (northwest), with a marked drop in richness in the latitudinal gradient. The coincidence of the geographical ranges of the species de ned a total of 47 consensus areas of distributional congruence, and each one was assigned to one of eight identi ed patterns: the Yungas, the northern sector of the Yungas (nested with the previous one), the northeast, a disjunct pattern that includes the northwest and northeast of the country, the Chaco region along with other surrounding regions, and the Patagonian region. Recibido: 30 setiembre 2020. Aceptado: 1 diciembre 2020. Editor asociado: U. F. J. Pardiñas & C. A. Galliari. 2 Mastozoología Neotropical, en prensa, Mendoza, 2021 h p://www.sarem.org.ar – h p://www.sbmz.org M. L. Sandoval Salinas et al. Fifty-one species (76% of the total) were characterizers. Several of the patterns found coincide with areas recovered for other organisms (plants and animals), which could suggest the existence of areas with common histories for much of the biota of the region. Palabras clave: Chaco, murciélagos, Patagonia, patrones biogeográ cos, Yungas.