Home range and habitat selection of the Indiana bat in an agricultural landscape

Abstract

Agricultural intensification has led to widespread declines in wildlife biodiversity across many taxa. North American bats provide valuable services for agriculture yet basic ecological understanding of how bats use habitat in intensely agricultural areas is lacking. We examined the movements and resource selection of the federally endangered Indiana bat (Myotis sodalis) in a highly agricultural landscape in central Ohio, USA. We recorded nocturnal movements of 36 Indiana bats during the summers of 2009 and 2010; mean (±SD) fixed‐kernel home range area was 212.0 ± 132.4 ha. We examined second‐ and third‐order habitat selection and found that bats selected all habitat types more strongly than cropland at all analysis scales. Woodland was selected more strongly than any other habitat with the exception of open water. However, although bats heavily used a wooded stream corridor, movement was not restricted by large expanses of cropland and bats traversed open, non‐forested areas >1 km across to reach small, isolated, wooded patches. The limits and to what extent Indiana bats can persist using small, isolated habitat patches are unknown, but our data support continued emphasis on conservation of riparian habitats and wooded patches within agricultural landscapes. © 2014 The Wildlife Society, 2014.

The relative influence of forest loss and fragmentation on insectivorous bats: does the type of matrix matter?

“…Landscapes dominated by an agricultural matrix, with smaller and more distant suitable habitat patches, are likely associated with bats needing long commuting flights. Whereas bats associated with forested landscapes have shorter home ranges and, consequently, may respond to shorter scales in a modified landscape (Chaverri et al 2007;Saïd et al 2009;Kniowski and Gehrt 2014). For example, the Indiana bat (Myotis sodalis) home ranges within a highly agricultural landscape are larger compared to other studies in forested and rural-urban landscapes (Kniowski and Gehrt 2014).…”

“…In agricultural landscapes, bat activity for most species was strongly determined by both forest amount and fragmentation at large spatial scales. Although limited information is available on the movements and home range size of Chilean bat species, these scales are larger than the average maximum distance traveled by similar small and medium-sized aerial insectivorous bats during foraging activity elsewhere (Elmore et al 2005;Sparks et al 2005;Walters et al 2007;Henderson and Broders 2008;Kniowski and Gehrt 2014). The fact that bat activity was associated with forest amount and fragmentation at scales larger than the home range of individual bats suggests that local bat activity reflects a number of factors operating at different scales probably depending on species-specific behavioral or life-history characteristics.…”

“…Whereas bats associated with forested landscapes have shorter home ranges and, consequently, may respond to shorter scales in a modified landscape (Chaverri et al 2007;Saïd et al 2009;Kniowski and Gehrt 2014). For example, the Indiana bat (Myotis sodalis) home ranges within a highly agricultural landscape are larger compared to other studies in forested and rural-urban landscapes (Kniowski and Gehrt 2014). Our results suggest that multiple-scale assessment are necessary to adequately quantify the effects of forest amount and fragmentation on mobile species that inhabit complex landscapes where habitat patches are difficult to define and thus, may be critical to the success of management and conservation strategies in human modified landscapes.…”

“…Unfortunately, little is known about the home range size of Chilean bats. We chose these seven landscapes buffer distances based on distances travelled between roosting and foraging sites by similar small and medium-sized aerial insectivorous bats elsewhere (Elmore et al 2005;Sparks et al 2005;Walters et al 2007;Henderson and Broders 2008;Kniowski and Gehrt 2014). Landscapes buffer distances greater than a 5-km radius were not examined because those areas would overlap substantially, Landscape Ecol producing spatial autocorrelation.…”

Landscape structure influences the use of social information in an insectivorous bat

“…Behavioural adjustments manifest in various ways, including changes in movement patterns (Salinas‐Melgoza et al , Tucker et al ), or changes in the social systems and interactions with conspecifics (Banks et al ). Especially aerial insectivores may compensate for human‐induced changes in prey abundance and distribution through their high mobility (Kniowski and Gehrt ), and thus may be able to exploit a multitude of landscapes. Yet, aerial insectivores that depend on ephemeral, patchily distributed prey, may suffer from difficulties in locating profitable foraging grounds in structurally poor landscapes such as intensively used farmland (Mueller and Fagan , Batáry et al ).…”