Following the damage: Increasing western barbastelle bat activity in bark beetle infested stands in Białowieża Primeval forest ...

• Main Authors: Rachwald, Alek, Ciesielski, Mariusz, Szurlej, Marta, Żmihorski, Michał
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Zenodo 2022
• Subjects: Biodiversity; Mammalia; Chiroptera; Chordata; Animalia; bats; bat; Norway; Barbastella barbastellus
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13424354; https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.13424354

(Uploaded by Plazi for the Bat Literature Project) Natural forest disturbances are increasingly common due to ongoing climate changes but their impact on most of forest organisms is poorly studied. Here we investigate the link between spruce bark beetle Ips typographus outbreak in 2011–2017 in Białowiez˙a Primeval Forest (Poland) and activity of a forest bat of conservation concern: the western barbastelle Barbastella barbastellus. Bats were surveyed by recording ultrasound signals on 8 transects (3 km each) in a mixed coniferous and deciduous forest with a different share of Norway spruce. The activity pattern of bats was found to correlate with the number of bark beetle infested Norway spruces in the following years within a 1 km buffers of the transects (339,354 trees in total) using generalised additive mixed models. We demonstrated that the number of bark beetle infested spruces was a positive predictor of barbastelle activity largely with 1- and 2-year lags: number of spruces infested in a year ...