Prescribed fire is becoming a common management tool for restoring forests of North America; however, effects of prescribed fire on forest-dwelling bats remain unclear. During 2006 and 2007, we monitored prey availability, diet, foraging behavior, and roost selection of adult female northern bats (Myotis septentrionalis) before and after 2 prescribed fires in dissected terrain of the Red River Gorge on the Daniel Boone National Forest in eastern Kentucky. Size of home ranges and core areas did not vary between bats radiotracked before and after fires. Bats foraged more often in the vicinity of pine stands than hardwood or mixed stands, and along ridges and midslopes than lower slopes, regardless of burn condition. Home ranges were closer to burned habitats following fires than to unburned habitats. Abundance of coleopterans, dipterans, and all insects combined captured in blacklight traps increased following prescribed fires. Fecal samples of bats demonstrated lepidopterans, coleopterans, and dipterans to be the 3 most important groups of insect prey, with consumption of dipterans increasing after burning. Bats chose roosts that were taller in height and in earlier stages of decay than random snags, and after prescribed fires chose roosts in trees with a greater number of cavities and a higher percentage of bark coverage. More roosts were observed in burned habitats (74.3%; n 5 26) after fires than in unburned habitats (25.7%; n 5 9). The results of this work suggest that northern bats are tolerant to prescribed fire on the landscape pattern and scale observed in this study. Northern bats responded to habitat alterations resulting from prescribed fires through shifts in the location of foraging areas as bats tracked changes in insect availability, and through shifts in the selection of roost trees by occupying trees and snags possessing more potential roosting microsites.

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The rapid colonization of the Pseudogymnoascus destructans fungus across cave systems in eastern North America and the associated bat mortalities (white-nose syndrome; WNS), necessitates studies of cave-hibernating bats that remain unaffected by, or in close proximity to, the leading edge of the fungal distribution to provide baseline predisturbance data from which to assess changes due to fungal effects. Studies of the physiological ecology of cave-hibernating bats during the spring staging and autumn swarming seasons are few, and an understanding of patterns in body condition of bats associated with entry into and emergence from hibernation is incomplete. We sampled bats at the entrance to a cave in Mammoth Cave National Park, Kentucky, during swarming and staging, prior to (2011 and 2012), concurrent with (2013), and following (2014) the arrival of the WNS fungus. We evaluated seasonal and annual changes in body mass and body condition of bats entering and leaving the cave. We captured 1,232 bats of eight species. Sex ratios of all species were male-biased. Capture success was substantially reduced in 2014, following the second winter after arrival of the WNS fungus. Significant temporal variation in body mass and body mass index was observed for little brown bats Myotis lucifugus, northern long-eared bats M. septentrionalis, and tri-colored bats Perimyotis subflavus, but not Indiana bats M. sodalis. Little brown bats and northern long-eared bats demonstrated significant increases in mean body mass index in 2014; this pattern likely reflected a relatively better body condition in bats that survived exposure to the WNS fungus. Most species demonstrated highest body mass and body mass index values in late swarming compared with other sampling periods, with tri-colored bats showing the greatest percent increase in body mass (42.5%) and body mass index (42.9%) prior to entering hibernation. These data indicate significant intraspecific variation in body condition of cave-hibernating bat species, both among years and between the seasons of autumn swarming and spring staging. We suggest this variation is likely to have implications for the relative vulnerability of species to WNS infection across the distribution of the Pseudogymnoascus fungus.