Swarming of bats at underground sites in Britain—implications for conservation ...

(Uploaded by Plazi for the Bat Literature Project) We investigated the extent of visitation of underground sites during late summer and autumn ('swarming') by bats. Bats were captured at eight cave, mine and tunnel sites in southern England over 6 years (1995–2000). A total of 3077 bats re...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Parsons, Katharine N, Jones, Gareth, Davidson-Watts, Ian, Greenaway, Frank
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:unknown
Published: Zenodo 2003
Subjects:
bat
Online Access:https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13437093
https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.13437093
Description
Summary:(Uploaded by Plazi for the Bat Literature Project) We investigated the extent of visitation of underground sites during late summer and autumn ('swarming') by bats. Bats were captured at eight cave, mine and tunnel sites in southern England over 6 years (1995–2000). A total of 3077 bats representing 11 of Britain's 16 species was caught. Myotis bats predominated in autumn. At some sites these are rarely seen during winter hibernation counts. Myotis nattereri and M. daubentonii were most common. However, species composition changed seasonally. At one site, M. brandtii dominated early in the season and at all sites peak activity of M. daubentonii was earlier than in M. nattereri. Relatively high numbers of internationally vulnerable species such as M. bechsteinii and Barbastella barbastellus were recorded. There was a strong male bias in captures of swarming species. Swarming probably has an important reproductive function, most males are reproductively active at this time and such sites may be important for ...