Mountain caves of the central region of Veracruz: A vertebrate biodiversity reservoir in a Neotropical hotspot

at different altitudinal zones, and between cave environments using the function “beta.div” in the R package “adespatial” version 0.3–14 [42]. Beta-diversity decomposition analysis. To evaluate the variation in the composition of ver- tebrate species assemblages within and between caves, between altitudinal zones, and between cave environments, we performed a beta-diversity partitioning analysis considering that: btotal ¼ brepl þ brich where βtotal represents the total variation in vertebrate species composition between assem- blages, βrepl accounts for the variation due to species replacement, while βrich refers to the absolute differences in species richness [41,43]. Results We recorded 11,520 individuals (4,969 mammals, 6,483 birds, 36 reptiles, 27 amphibians, and 5 fish) belonging to 78 families, 187 genera, and 242 vertebrate species (184 birds, 30 mam- mals, 15 reptiles, 12 amphibians, and 1 fish) in the 16 caves sampled (Tables 1 and S1). Birds showed the highest number of species in karst and volcanic caves (153 and 89, respectively), while amphibians and fish had the lowest number of species. Most vertebrates were birds (57.25%) and mammals (43.87%), which together represented 99.4% of all the vertebrates recorded (S1 Table). Species diversity (Hill numbers) The Hill number profiles showed contrasting patterns between karst and volcanic caves for all vertebrate classes. The highest species richness (q0) of all vertebrates sampled was observed in karst caves, with birds and mammals being the classes with the highest species richness (Fig

2A and 2B). However, only reptiles and amphibians had a higher richness of common, domi- nant, and very dominant species in karst caves (Fig 2C and 2D). In contrast, volcanic caves had the lowest richness (q0) and diversity of vertebrates (q0,1,2,3). Fig 2. Diversity (Hill numbers) profiles of mammals (a), birds (b), reptiles (c), and amphibians (d) in karst (K) and volcanic (V) caves. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0306105.g002 PLOS ONE Vertebrates in caves of Neotropical hotspot PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0306105 August 9, 2024 7 / 19