Data for: Species richness and assemblages of bats along a forest elevational transect in Papua New Guinea

Over the past decades, elevational gradients have become a powerful tool with which to understand the underlying cause(s) of biodiversity. The Mt. Wilhelm elevational transect is one such example, having been used to study the birds, insects, and plants of Papua New Guinea (PNG). However, a survey of mammals from this forest elevational transect was lacking. We thus aimed to investigate patterns in the community structure and species richness of bats (Chiroptera) along the transect, link the species to available regional data, and explain the observed patterns by including environmental characteristics. Bat assemblages were surveyed between 200 m and a timberline at 3,700 m a.s.l. at eight study sites separated by 500 m in elevation. We conducted mist-netting and acoustic surveys to detect and identify species at each site. Regional data were compiled to compare local with regional diversity. Finally, biotic (i.e., food availability, habitat features) and abiotic (i.e., me..., The environmental data comes from measurements conducted in previous surveys (Sam et al. 2019) along the Mt. Wilhelm transect.
The Mt.Wilhelm data compiled all the bat species captured and recorded during this study along the Mt. Wilhelm transect.
The regional data compiled the distribution of the bat species described as present in Central Range and Sepik-Ramu Basin in Bonaccorso (1998).,