Selection of roosting habitat by male Myotis bats in a boreal forest

Abstract

21Male little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus (Le Conte, 1831)) and northern long-eared bat (Myotis 22 septentrionalis (Trouessart, 1897)), often roost under exfoliating bark, within the trunks and 23 cavities of trees during summer. Current lack of knowledge about the roosting ecology of these 24 species in boreal forest limits our understanding of how they may be affected by logging. The 25 main objective was to identify tree and forest stand features that were selected by bats for genre Myotis au sein des sapinières à bouleau blanc. 58Mots clés: arbre-gîte, chicots, chauve-souris nordique, forêt boréale, LiDAR, Myotis lucifugus, 59Myotis septentrionalis, petite chauve-souris brune, Québec, sélection d'habitat 60 61 4

Within‐season changes in habitat use of forest‐dwelling boreal bats

“…The three‐dimensional arrangement of vegetation has an essential influence on habitat quality and, therefore, the presence and abundance of animal species at local scales (Tews et al, 2004). The complexity and diversity of vegetation determine the diversity and behavior of higher organisms by influencing the availability and diversity of resources and niches (Hekkala, Tarvainen, & Tolvanen, 2014), modifying microclimatic conditions (Melin, Matala, & Mehtatalo, 2014), or by providing sites for breeding and roosting (Fabianek, Simard, Racine, & Desrochers, 2015) and shelter or concealment from predators (Muiruri, Rainio, & Koricheva, 2016). The importance of forest structure on diversity has been recognized in the boreal zone, where industrial forestry has been an important economic driver for decades (Maanavilja, Aapala, Haapalehto, Kotiaho, & Tuittila, 2014; Noreika et al, 2015; Santangeli, Hogmander, & Laaksonen, 2013).…”

Ground-based and LiDAR-derived measurements reveal scale-dependent selection of roost characteristics by the rare tree-dwelling bat Barbastella barbastellus

“…Bats selected roosts in trees that had a more open canopy structure than random trees, as has been observed elsewhere for barbastelles (Russo et al, 2004;Kortmann et al, 2017) and other echolocating tree-dwelling bats (Kalcounis-Ruppell et al, 2005;Fabianek et al, 2015b). Much of this effect, however, may result from the strong selection by barbastelles of roost cavities in standing dead trees that had little or no canopy at all.…”

“…Due to patchiness in the coverage of open-source LiDAR data, comparisons could only be made between 29 roost and random plots, respectively. Following Fabianek et al (2015b), canopy gaps were defined as being >2 m², with a tree height that was one-third the height of the surrounding mean canopy. Canopy ruggedness, as defined by Froidevaux et al (2016), was calculated in QGIS using a terrain ruggedness index (TRI) algorithm (Wilson et al, 2007).…”

Exploring Regional Variation in Roost Selection by Bats: Evidence from a Meta-Analysis

“…Technical developments in telemetry have been instrumental for our current understanding of habitat-species interactions with small mammals, such as bats [ 1 ].We now know that cavity- and bark-roosting bats rely upon living and standing dead trees ( i . e ., snags) in intermediate stages of decay [ 2 , 3 ] for roosting [ 4 , 5 ]. They have been reported roosting under exfoliating bark, inside trunk crevices, and within the cavities of both living and dead trees during the summer [ 2 , 5 – 7 ].…”

“…e ., snags) in intermediate stages of decay [ 2 , 3 ] for roosting [ 4 , 5 ]. They have been reported roosting under exfoliating bark, inside trunk crevices, and within the cavities of both living and dead trees during the summer [ 2 , 5 – 7 ]. The occurrence of several snags in a given stand likely indicates available roosts to bats [ 8 , 9 ].…”