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North Central
Research Station
202 Natural Resources
Columbia, MO 65211

(573) 875-5341

Betting on Knowledge to Help Save a Bat Species

[Photograph]: Sybill Amelon holds a bat with a radio transmitter Public attitudes towards bats have transformed in recent years, as word has spread about the beneficial services bats perform. As our appreciation grows, so too does our concern about the endangered status of gray bats and Indiana bats.

An effort to protect both species' wintering caves has paid off in a recovery for the gray bat. But Indiana bat numbers have continued to decline, from about 500,000 in 1991 to about 300,000 today, according to Sybill Amelon, a wildlife biologist at NC's Central Hardwood Ecosystem unit in Columbia, MO.

Amelon became interested in the Indiana bat when she was writing biological impact statements on the Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri. "We would try to find the best scientific knowledge on local bats, and there was often nothing known. In particular, with the Indiana bat, you just could not find any supporting research to determine if forest management practices would impact their population," says Amelon.

Amelon decided to try to fill in those gaps. In particular, she hopes to gain a better understanding of the home range, movements, and habitats used by several different species of eastern forest bats, and to translate that into management guidelines that could help maintain healthy populations of all species.

Listening in on bats

Amelon and her coworkers combine two methods to track bat movements. The traditional method is to drape mist nets over waterways and flyways to capture the animals and attach very small radio transmitters to them. Some species, including the Indiana bat, are difficult to catch with nets, so the team is also using acoustical devices that pick up the bats' unique echolocation signals.

With both the acoustic and telemetry information, the team can map out the distinctive habitats and home ranges of different types of bats. They'd like to identify the characteristics of high quality roosting and foraging habitat for each species. So far, they've found that the northern long-eared bat, Indiana bat, and gray bat tend to stick to more heavily wooded habitat, whereas red bats and pipistrelle bats prefer the edges of forest openings. Amelon says that these findings suggest that red bats or pipistrelle bats are well suited to adapt to management and other disturbances in their home ranges.

[Photograph]: close up of a bat The results have practical importance for managers at the Mark Twain National Forest, according to Jody Eberly, a wildlife biologist on the Mark Twain. "We need to understand how the bats use national forest habitat so that we're not contributing to the decline of any species, but at the same time we're able to provide forest products," she says.

The bat-human interface

One study is being conducted in an undeveloped area of the Mark Twain National Forest, while the other is in the interface between an urban and rural area. "We're comparing how the bats use habitats in areas that have lots of disturbance with how they use habitats in areas of low disturbance. If there isn't a difference, that's a strong indication that human disturbance in the summer habitat is not one of the problems associated with the (Indiana bat's) decline. It's kind of a process of elimination," Amelon says. It's a process she hopes will prevent another kind of elimination for one of our important bat species.

Source: NC News, Fall 2002

USDA Forest Service - North Central Research Station
Last Modified: June 02, 2004