Aerial-hawking bats adjust their use of space to the lunar cycle ...

• Main Authors: Roeleke, Manuel, Teige, Tobias, Hoffmeister, Uwe, Klingler, Friederike, Voigt, Christian C.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Zenodo 2018
• Subjects: Biodiversity; Mammalia; Chiroptera; Chordata; Animalia; bats; bat; Nyctalus noctula
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13432277; https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.13432277

(Uploaded by Plazi for the Bat Literature Project) Background: Animals change their habitat use in response to spatio-temporal fluctuation of resources. Some resources may vary periodically according to the moonphase. Yet it is poorly documented how animals, particularly nocturnal mammals, adjust their use of space in response to the moonphase. Here, we asked if an obligate nocturnal mammal, the aerial-hawking common noctule bat (Nyctalus noctula), adjusts its 3-dimensional flight behaviour and habitat use to the lunar period. Using miniaturized GPS loggers, we recorded 3-dimensional flight tracks of N. noctula and related these to a canopy height model derived from aerial laser scans to investigate whether bats adjust forest strata use to moonlight intensities. Results: Noctules frequently foraged above the canopy of coniferous forest at low moonlight intensities, but switched to using open grasslands and arable fields in nights with high moonlight intensities. During the few occasions when noctules used ...