Long-term individualized monitoring of sympatric bat species reveals distinct species- and demographic differences in hibernation phenology ...

• Main Authors: Meier, Frauke, Grosche, Leo, Reusch, Christine, Runkel, Volker, Van Schaik, Jaap, Kerth, Gerald
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Zenodo 2022
• Subjects: Biodiversity; Mammalia; Chiroptera; Chordata; Animalia; bats; bat; Myotis nattereri
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13443734; https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.13443734

(Uploaded by Plazi for the Bat Literature Project) Background: Hibernation allows species to conserve energy and thereby bridge unfavorable environmental conditions. At the same time, hibernation imposes substantial ecological and physiological costs. Understanding how hibernation timing differs within and between species can provide insights into the underlying drivers of this trade-off. However, this requires individualized long-term data that are often unavailable. Here, we used automatic monitoring techniques and a reproducible analysis pipeline to assess the individualized hibernation phenology of two sympatric bat species. Our study is based on data of more than 1100 RFID-tagged Daubenton's bats (Myotis daubentonii) and Natterer's bats (Myotis nattereri) collected over seven years at a hibernaculum in Germany. We used linear mixed models to analyze species-, sex- and age-specific differences in entrance, emergence and duration of the longest continuous period spent in the hibernaculum. Results: ...