Craniodental traits predict feeding performance and dietary hardness in a community of Neotropical free-tailed bats (Chiroptera: Molossidae)

Form-function studies have established a strong link between dental morphology and the mechanical properties of food items, with animals evolving tooth shapes theoretically ideal for their diets. However, information on how teeth perform under natural conditions is rare, which limits our understanding of how dental morphology influences dietary ecology and niche partitioning within animal communities.
Free-tailed bats (Chiroptera: Molossidae) are a diverse clade of aerial insectivorous mammals that exhibit an outstanding variation in size and craniodental traits, which have been directly related to ecological segregation among sympatric species.
We investigate the mechanisms that allow functional dietary specialization and trophic segregation among sympatric free-tailed bat species inhabiting a Neotropical forest. To do so, we coupled data on 3D dental topographic metrics, head and skull dimensions, field-collected feeding performance and dietary hardness measurements.
We found that evo...