Bats in Habitats, Bats as Habitats: An integrative ecological framework for understanding synergistic interactions across levels of community organization

Melissa Ingala, Hernani Oliveira , Lexi E. Frank , Mudasar Hussain, Adeel Kazam, Daniel J Becker , Caroline Cummings, Munkhnast Dalannast, Tigga Kingston, Jennifer Krauel, Carla Mavian, Clifton D. McKee , Santiago Perea, A. Nayelli Rivera-Villanueva, Juliane Schaer , Kelly Speer, Nia Toshkova, Susan M. Tsang, Amy Wray, Riley Bernard, Sophie Borthwick, Jeffrey T. Foster, Md Ashraf Ul Hasan, David Wechuli, M. Elise Lauterbur 

Global biodiversity and ecosystem function are the result of complex networks of interactions and feedbacks between animals and their environments, which in turn are affected by the interactions and feedbacks between animals and the organisms they host. Bats are important contributors to ecosystems and biodiversity maintenance, so understanding their complex interaction networks, including the main drivers of and responses to ecological and environmental changes and their global implications, requires adopting a systems-based perspective. In this review, we advocate for organismal biologists to adopt an approach that takes interacting systems into account from the outset of study design by explicitly probing hypotheses that cross levels of biological organization. We first walk the reader through what is gained by using the “Bats in Habitats, Bats as Habitats” conceptual framework versus traditional single-level approaches, followed by a brief overview of how to apply systems modelling tools and data requirements for using them. We next ground the framework in a comprehensive literature review of bats in habitats, bats as habitats, and multi-scale interactions across systems. Finally, we distill knowledge gaps uncovered through the framework into actionable hypotheses and research priorities. This review provides a roadmap for bat specialists and “bat beginners” from orthogonal fields to apply systems-thinking to yield a more holistic view of ecological complexity.