Habitat and seasonal drivers of leukocyte profiles within and across Neotropical bat species

Land conversion is a dominant form of environmental change that can alter infection dynamics in wildlife by affecting host immune defense. Such effects may be compounded by seasonal variation in resources and reproduction and vary among members of a host community, yet the combined effects of habitat, season, and species identity on wildlife immunity remain poorly understood. We tested within- and across-species effects of land conversion and seasonality on immunity in Neotropical bats by quantifying hematological markers of physiological stress and inflammation. We sampled seven species across a large preserve and a smaller forest fragment in northern Belize during both the dry and wet seasons. Using phylogenetic generalized linear mixed models, we tested the overall effects of habitat and season and quantified per-species impacts. Total white blood cell counts and neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratios showed no overall habitat or seasonal effects but displayed strong species-specific respon..., , # Seasonal and habitat drivers of leukocyte profiles within and across Neotropical bat species Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.d51c5b0g2](10.5061/dryad.d51c5b0g2) ## Description of the data and file structure These data include hematology values from multiple bat species in Belize over two seasons and two sites. ### Files and variables #### File: Becker\_et\_al.\_2025\_BZ2122\_hematology.csv **Description:**Â ##### Variables * BZID: unique identifier for each individual bat * date: date of bat capture * site: site of capture in Belize (Lamanai Archeological Reserve vs Ka'Kabish) * fyear: factor year of capture (2021, 2022) * species: bat species name * label: bat species name matching to the Upham et al. 2019 taxonomy/phylogeny * family: bat taxonomic family * twbc: average number of white blood cells across 10 fields of view at 400X magnification * n: percent neutrophils derived from a differential white blood cell count * l:Â percent lymphocytes derived from a differential white blo...,