Movement paths of common noctule bats in the Berlin metropolitan area ...

• Main Authors: Voigt, Christian, Scholl, Julia, Bauer, Juliane, Teige, Tobias, Yovel, Yossi, Kramer-Schadt, Stephanie, Gras, Pierre
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2020
• Subjects: Nyctalus noctula
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.qnk98sfd4; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.qnk98sfd4

Cities are a challenging habitat for obligate nocturnal mammals because of the ubiquitous use of artificial light at night (ALAN). How nocturnal animals move in an urban landscape, particularly in response to ALAN is largely unknown. We studied the movement responses, foraging and commuting, of common noctules (Nyctalus noctula) to urban landscape features in general and ALAN in particular. We equipped 20 bats with miniaturized GPS loggers in the Berlin metropolitan area and related spatial positions of bats to anthropogenic and natural landscape features and levels of ALAN. Common noctules foraged close to ALAN only next to bodies of water or well vegetated areas, probably to exploit swarms of insects lured by street lights. In contrast, they avoided illuminated roads, irrespective of vegetation cover nearby. Predictive maps identified most of the metropolitan area as non-favoured by this species because of high levels of impervious surfaces and ALAN. Dark corridors were used by common noctules for ... : The study area was located in the district of Marzahn-Hellersdorf in northeast Berlin and consisted largely of residential and commercial areas, with a high proportion of large pre-fab buildings in the north, gradually outnumbered by smaller houses in the south (Umweltatlas Berlin 2010). All work was conducted under the animal care and ethics approval of the federal agency (C113-G0114/15) and the approval of the conservation agency (IE 224-OA-AS/G/1167.2). Between June and early September 2015 and between July and August in 2016 and 2017, we captured 20 male common noctule bats at natural and artificial daytime roosts in the parks ‘Parkfriedhof Marzahn’ and ‘Schlosspark Biesdorf’, two larger parks which are not or only partly illuminated by street lamps, respectively. We attached a single GPS logger (Robin, CellGuide Ltd., Tel Aviv, Israel; Vesper, ASD technologies inc., Haifa, Israel) to the back of each captured bat using medical latex glue (Sauer Hautkleber, Manfred Sauer Germany). In 2016 and 2017, we ...