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Seed and Pollen Dispersal by Small Pteropodid Bats in Lowland Forests of Terengganu, 79
Seed and Pollen Dispersal by Small Pteropodid Bats in Lowland Forests of Terengganu,
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Peninsular Malaysia
Peninsular Malaysia

et al. (2003) and Lim et al. (2018). We also used the extensive review by Aziz et
al. (2021) covering 47 countries including the southeast Asian region, but we
could not find any photos of seeds or pollen grains of these tree species to assist
our identification. Thus, we only compared the seeds with seed photos provided
by Ahmad-Yazid et al. (2019) for ingested seeds by the pteropodid bats captured
in the Kenyir Forest Area, Hulu Terengganu. Unfortunately, the seeds extracted
from the faeces did not match with the morphology of the known seeds collected
and from previous studies, thus the seed samples were classified based on the
shape and colour of the bean seeds only.

We used descriptive analysis to report species richness and abundance in the study
area, and Chi Square (Ȥ ) to test the homogeneous frequency (abundance) between
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2
the bat species. The Ȥ with Yates’ Correction for Continuity (Fowler et al.
1998) was used to test the significance in number of faecal samples with and
without seeds for C. brachyotis and C. horsfieldii. Finally, the Mann-Whitney
Test (U) was used to determine the significant difference in number of seeds in
the faecal samples between the two bat species. All analyses were conducted
using IBM Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 23.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Bat Species and Abundance in Lowland Forest

A total of 64 pteropodid bats consisting of six species were netted from the
study sites (Table 1). About 53 % of the total captures were of the lesser short-
nosed fruit bat, C. brachyotis, which were disproportionately the most frequently
captured species (Ȥ = 65.56, df = 5, p < 0.05). This was followed by the
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Horsfield’s fruit bat, C. horsfieldii with 12 individuals (19 %), while the other
species recorded only four and five individuals each. From these, a total of 24
faecal samples were collected from all species except for the spotted-winged fruit
bat, B. seimundi.

The six species recorded in this study represent approximately 43% of the total
14 pteropodid bats including the large pteropodids, flying foxes from the genus
Pteropus recorded in Terengganu (Mohd-Azlan et al., 2001; Mazlan et al., 2015;
Roslan et al., 2016; Pounsin et al., 2018; Nor Zalipah et al., 2019; Zakaria et al.,
2020). The most commonly caught species, C. brachyotis is common and
abundant in all habitat, including orchards and plantations (Kingston et al., 2006).
The other species recorded in this study are primarily forest inhabitant, occurring
from lowland to hill and montane forest.