Chapter 6: Organochlorine Pesticides in Rivers from Riparian Cloud Forests: Prediction of Concentrations in the Fruit Bat Sturnira hondurensis

Riparian forests are commonly used as a foraging site where bat species acquire both food and water. Because of their position along rivers, they are traps where organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) enter the natural cycles taking place in the river ecosystem. In this chapter, we use Bayesian inference methods to validate the utilization of OCP concentrations measured in water in the prediction of concentrations bioaccumulated by a frugivorous bat species. Microbasins in a landscape once covered by tropical montane cloud forest were the study units, and Sturnira hondurensis, the most abundant bat species captured by conventional mist-net techniques, the species used as a mammalian model.