Selection of roosting habitats by Nyctalus noctula and Nyctalus leisleri in Białowieża Forest—Adaptive response to forest management? ...

• Main Authors: Ruczyński, I., Nicholls, B., MacLeod, C.D., Racey, P.A.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Zenodo 2010
• Subjects: Biodiversity; Mammalia; Chiroptera; Chordata; Animalia; bats; bat; Nyctalus noctula
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13429345; https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.13429345

(Uploaded by Plazi for the Bat Literature Project) Tree dwelling bats select cavities in large, old, dying or dead trees. This inevitably brings them into direct conflict with the interests of forest managers, who are trained to fell such trees. Therefore the identification of forest stands providing optimal roosting opportunities for bats is crucial, in order to provide appropriate guidelines for forest management. It is also important to identify the extent to which the roosting ecology of bats changes in response to habitat modification. Białowiez˙ a Forest (BF) offers a unique opportunity, in the temperate zone, to observe differences between areas with no direct human intervention and managed areas and in particular to reveal the effect of forest management on the roosting ecology of forest dwelling bat species. We used GIS techniques to evaluate bats' spatial response to changes in forest structure and to test the hypotheses that the forest dwelling bats Nyctalus noctula and Nyctalus leisleri prefer ...