Diversification dynamics of the environmental and functional niches in the largest radiation of neotropical bats.

Increasing evidence supports studying changes in ecological niches at wide spatial and temporal scales as a valuable tool to explain species diversity patterns, and understand how species respond to new environmental conditions. Despite the importance of these studies, approaches to niche evolution are usually focused on climatic variables, or exclude species functional traits and species interactions. Hence, how the interaction between the Grinnellian and Eltonian niches explains the diversity of species remains unknown. The aim of this project is to elucidate whether the evolution of the Grinnellian and Eltonian niches is coupled or decoupled, and how these processes relate to species diversity. We will integrate spatial, climatic, ecological, morphological and molecular data for one of the most diverse groups of vertebrates in the Neotropics: the bats of the superfamily Noctilionoidea. We will conduct macroevolutionary studies of the Eltonian niche with traits demonstrably linked to performance and adaptation for the first time. Then, we will use innovative comparative methods to answer one of the central questions in ecology andevolutionary biology: how diversification dynamics in the two classes of ecological.