Presence and Absence of Bats Across Habitat Scales in the Upper Coastal Plain of South Carolina

Abstract

During 2001, we used active acoustical sampling (Anabat I/) to survey foraging habitat relationships of bats on the Savannah River Site (SRS) in the upper Coastal Plain of South Carolina. Using an a priori information-theoretic approach, we conducted logistic regression analysis to examine presence of individual bat species relative to a suite of microhabitat, stand, and landscape-level features such as forest structural metrics, forest type, proximity to riparian zones and Carolina bay wetlands, insect abundance, and weather. There was considerable empirical support to suggest that the majority of the activity of bats across most of the 6 species occurred at smaller, stand-level habitat scales that combine measures of habitat clutter (e.g., declining forest canopy cover and basal area), proximity to riparian zones, and insect abundance. Accordingly, we hypothesized that most foraging habitat relationships were more local than landscape across this relatively large area for generalist species of bats. The southeastern myotis (Myotis austroriparius) was the partial exception, as its presence was linked to proximity of Carolina bays (best-approximating model) and bottomland hardwood communities (other models with empirical support). Efforts at SRS to promote open longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) and loblolly pine (P. taeda) savanna conditions and to actively restore degraded Carolina bay wetlands will be beneficial to bats. Accordingly, our results should provide managers better insight for crafting guidelines for bat habitat conservation that could be linked to widely accepted land management and environmental restoration practices for the region.

Forest-floor temperatures and soil moisture across riparian zones on first- to third-order headwater streams in southern New England, USA

“…In addition to the increased biological diversity inherent in the juxtaposition of aquatic and terrestrial habitats (Crow et al, 2000;Sabo et al, 2005), riparian zones have been shown to be unique from adjacent upland forest. Differences in vegetative composition (Goebel et al, 2003;Hagan et al, 2006) and in use by invertebrates (Rykken et al, 2007b), amphibians (Pauley et al, 2000;Perkins and Hunter, 2006;Crawford and Semlitsch, 2007), birds (DeGraaf and Yamasaki, 2000;Bub et al, 2004) and mammals (DeGraaf and Yamasaki, 2000;Ford et al, 2006) have been reported. The unique habitat qualities of riparian zones have been ascribed, in part, to their microclimatic conditions (Brosofske et al, 1997;Moore et al, 2005;Olson et al, 2007;Rykken et al, 2007a).…”

Developing macrohabitat models for bats in parks using maxent and testing them with data collected by citizen scientists

“…Acoustic surveys can be conducted in areas where capturing bats with the traditional method of mist netting is difficult (that is within parks). The present data collected by acoustics has been successfully used to model species presence in association with habitat characteristics in a number of other studies (Brooks and Ford, 2005;Erickson and West, 2003;Ford et al, 2005;Ford et al, 2006;Francl et al, 2004;Loeb and O'Keefe, 2006;Zimmerman and Glanz, 2000).…”

“…Previous models for predicting bat distributions have often been conducted at the landscape scale, which by their nature are relatively coarse, placing up to 1 km buffers around survey points (Ford et al, 2006). A focus on this large scale provides limited insight into the characteristics of the area immediately surrounding the foraging environment and this intermediate macro habitat (Saab, 1999) scale is often the target of management within protected areas (Abella et al, 2001).…”

An Incremental Economic Analysis of Establishing Early Successional Habitat for Biodiversity

“…ESHs are important foraging sites for a number of North American bat species as they provide areas with abundant insects and reduced clutter, allowing for unobstructed flight and reduced 'noise' when echolocating [40][41][42]. For example, six of 15 bat species found in the Central Hardwoods Region [42], three of four bat species groups in Ontario, Canada [43], four of four bat species in the Piedmont of Georgia [44], three of three bat species groups in the managed forests of Ohio [45], and three of seven bat species in the managed forests of Indiana [46] commonly forage in open areas or their edges.…”