Discovering underground bat hibernacula in lowland eastern Europe ...

• Main Authors: Godlevska, Lena, Shpak, Aliaksei, Savchenko, Mariia, Vorobei, Pavlo
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Zenodo 2023
• Subjects: Biodiversity; Mammalia; Chiroptera; Chordata; Animalia; bats; bat; Barbastella barbastellus
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13491308; https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.13491308

(Uploaded by Plazi for the Bat Literature Project) The importance of underground hibernacula for the conservation of bats and monitoring their populations is well-recognized. However, the lowland territory of Belarus, with absent natural caves and suitable for bats mines, was one of the least surveyed European regions in terms of underground bat sites, and especially hibernacula. To address this knowledge gap, in 2020, we conducted a broadscale one winter bat survey, exploring 90 underground sites (basements, cellars, church crypts, fortifications, and facilities of abandoned Soviet missile bases) in various parts of Belarus. To our knowledge, none of these sites had been examined for bats before. In 56 of the 90 underground sites, we discovered hibernating bats (a total of 1054 ind.) of six species: Barbastella barbastellus (78.5% of all bats), Myotis daubentonii (7.4%), Plecotus auritus (5.1%), Eptesicus nilssonii (4.9%), Myotis brandtii and Eptesicus serotinus (in sum, 2%). The distribution of bats among ...