Preliminary Study of Habitat-Related Bat Fauna of Mastouta-Bishshouk Region (Northwest Tunisia)

Abstract

In order to define appropriate conservation measures in northern Tunisia we surveyed the bat fauna of Mastouta-Bishshouk region in both roosting sites and foraging areas. A total of 11 species was recorded. We found only three occupied roosts including a maternity colony of Rhinolophus ferrumequinum, Miniopterus schreibersii and Myotis cappacinii in a train abandoned tunnel. A tunnel of water channel hosted Rhinolophus mehelyi, M. schreibersii and M. punicus. Echolocation calls were recorded at a bridge over Beja Wadi, at an artificial basin, and in crop fields. Bat activity was the highest at the bridge in late March, and null in the harvested crop fields in late August. Pipistrellus kuhlii was the most active bat species in the three sites, Pipistrellus pipistrellus was the second most active species, followed by Eptesicus isabellinus. Plecotus gaisleri and Myotis punicus were detected only once at the bridge and the basin respectively. This bat assemblage is representative of the bat fauna of northern Tunisia. Roost and foraging area surveys strongly benefit acoustic recording, even in winter when some bats remain active. The rare local underground roosts should be protected from human disturbance and the water quality of Majerda Wadi should be improved.

Bat species richness and activity in Dghoumes National Park (Southwest Tunisia): a preliminary survey

“…Bat richness was lower than that in similar studies in central and northern Tunisia (11 species in Jebel Mghilla National Park and Mastouta-Bishshouk region, Dalhoumi et al, 2014Dalhoumi et al, , 2019. Our results reflect the difficulty in detecting bat fauna in deserts even in areas where water is available throughout the year.…”

“…Recorded calls, including feeding and drinking buzzes, were manually identified to species level using shape and other call parameters (Barataud, 2012). Echolocation calls of Tadarida teniotis, Eptesicus isabellinus, Pipistrellus kuhlii and Rhinopoma cystops were identified using reference calls collected in various sites in Tunisia (Dalhoumi et al, 2014(Dalhoumi et al, , 2016(Dalhoumi et al, , 2019. Asellia tridens uses a typical signal with constant frequency at 108-122 kHz (Jones et al, 1993).…”

“…Acoustic monitoring in Northern Africa only started in the last decade (Dietz et al, 2007;Liéron et al, 2008;Benda et al, 2010;Dieuleveut et al, 2010;Disca et al, 2014), including surveys in Tunisia by Rebelo and Brito (2006) and Puechmaille et al (2012). More recently, Dalhoumi et al (2014Dalhoumi et al ( , 2016Dalhoumi et al ( , 2019 studied bat activity and habitat use in Tunisian localities and showed that acoustic monitoring is useful to study bats in this type of ecosystems as it can more accurately describe the species richness than methods such as mist-netting and cave monitoring. Due to logistic constraints, acoustic monitoring was often limited to only recording bat activity during the first part of the night, however, modern automatic bat detectors are now widely available and can record bat calls overnight (e.g.…”

Bats of the Tunisian Desert: Preliminary Data Using Acoustic Identification and First Record of Taphozous nudiventris in the Country

“…Our records extend the range of four Mediterranean bat species (P. kuhlii, E. isabellinus, P. gaisleri, and T. teniotis). P. kuhlii is the most widespread species in Tunisia [17] and was always the most active bat in previous studies in central and northern Tunisia [19][20][21][22], in Egypt and Libyan oases [15,[53][54][55], and in northern Algerian Sahara [41]. However, this extent and numbers benefit from the adaptation of P. kuhlii to desert conditions, with an ecomorphotype that has long been considered a valid species (but see [15,[25][26][27]).…”

“…In Tunisia, after two reviews [17,18], several studies improved our knowledge of the distribution, habitat, and seasonal activity of bats in the northern and central areas of the country [19][20][21][22]. The unique recent record for the Saharan area was collected during a tourist visit to Jbil National Park, Great Oriental Erg [23].…”