Figure 6. Bacterial richness on bat skin increases with latitude in complex ways.

Bayesian bootstrapped loess line of bacteria richness on individual bats by changing latitude. The red line is the 95% uncertainty interval line and 20 additional gray lines show measures of uncertainty. This highlights the complicated interactions of bat species, latitude, habitat, ecoregion, and the impact on overall bacterial richness of the number of bat species present. Loess lines are for visualization only. The black dots in the upper portion represent the presence of the bats species at a given sampling location. The red dots are cave-caught bats and the blue dots are surface-netted bats.