North America’s temperate bats provide ecosystem services such as insect control. With imminent threats to these ecologically important mammals (e.g. habitat loss, wind turbines, disease, etc.), proper conservation management requires detailed knowledge of their habitat use. In 2000, two female Myotis sodalis were radio-tagged to a maternal roost in Wright State University’s (WSU) urban campus woods post-capture. Emergent surveys were also performed in Summer 2015 on a small portion of the property, and until recently, additional monitoring was not implemented. Each bat species in Ohio is state and/or federally listed; thus, surveying all bat activity is critical for determining baseline habitat use and establishing conservation management strategies. We hypothesized 1) bat foraging selection of primary forests over secondary forest 2) stronger selection for riparian areas than interior or edge habitats, and 3) greater bat activity in areas with artificial lighting since bats were recorded emerging and foraging in a highly lit area in 2015. We implemented walking bat acoustic routes throughout the study site in Summer 2017. We then created generalized linear models and determined resource selection probabilities from the model best fit for foraging habitat selection.
Results/Conclusions
Artificial lighting did not influence foraging selection. Eptesicus fuscus selected foraging habitats in secondary forest overall, with the strongest selection along secondary edge habitats (wse=0.64, SE=0.09). Lasiurus borealis selected foraging habitats in secondary forests, with the strongest selection in secondary riparian habitats (wsr=1.00, SE=0.00). Lasiurus cinereus selected comparable foraging habitats in primary and secondary forests along edges and interiors (wpe=0.50, SE=0.07; wse=0.58, SE=0.18; wpi=0.21, SE=0.11; wsi=0.18, SE=0.08), but preferred riparian habitats in secondary forest (wsr=0.31, SE=1121.81). Lasionycteris noctivagans showed stronger selection for edges and interiors in primary forests (wpe=0.46, SE=0.03; wpi=0.42, SE=0.06), but selected riparian habitats in secondary forest (wsr=1.00, SE=0.00). Similarly, Myotis spp. selected edges and interiors in primary forests (wpe=0.42, SE=0.17wpi=0.51, SE=0.16), and had strongest foraging selection in secondary riparian habitats (wsr=1.00, SE=0.00). Overall, only the selection of edge habitats in primary and secondary forests was somewhat consistent among species, while variation was large among interior and riparian habitats. Our best fit model does not support any posed hypothesis, but our presence data will be useful as a baseline and for continued acoustic research and management strategies.