Species-specific barrier effects of a motorway on the habitat use of two threatened forest-living bat species ...

• Main Authors: Kerth, Gerald, Melber, Markus
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Zenodo 2009
• Subjects: Biodiversity; Mammalia; Chiroptera; Chordata; Animalia; bats; bat; Barbastella barbastellus
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13453025; https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.13453025

(Uploaded by Plazi for the Bat Literature Project) It is generally recognized that roads can adversely affect local animal populations but little is known how roads affect bats. In particular, no study compared the response of bats that differ in foraging ecology to motorways that cut through the breeding habitat. As bats are key species in conservation, such data are urgently needed for designing management plans. Using radio-telemetry, mist netting, and mark-recapture data we investigated the effects of a motorway with heavy traffic on the habitat use of two threatened forest-living bats. We compared barbastelle bats (Barbastella barbastellus), which forage in open space, to Bechstein's bats (Myotis bechsteinii), which glean prey from the vegetation. Five of six radiotracked barbastelle bats crossed the motorway during foraging and roost switching, flying through underpasses and directly over the motorway. In contrast, only three of 34 radiotracked Bechstein's bats crossed the motorway during foraging, all ...