Effects of fine-scale foraging habitat selection on bat community structure and diversity in a temperate low mountain range forest ...

• Main Authors: Kusch, Jürgen, Schotte, Frederick
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Zenodo 2024
• Subjects: Biodiversity; Mammalia; Chiroptera; Chordata; Animalia; bats; bat; Pipistrellus pipistrellus
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13498882; https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.13498882

(Uploaded by Plazi for the Bat Literature Project) Pipistrellus pipistrellus > Myotis myotis > Nyctalus leisleri > N. noctula > Myotis daubentonii > Eptesicus serotinus > Plecotus austriacus. We analyzed patterns of habitat use and evaluated differences in community structure. Landscape structures (patch types) influenced more than geographical location of sites within the landscape the bat community structure. Bat communities at individual forest sites disaggregated into different smaller species groups of one to at least eight species at different landscape structures. The results confirm previously proposed models of foraging habitat use of bats. Species groups clustered in correlation with the landscape structures "open area" (clearance or grassland), "closed or open canopy forest", and "still water". The highest bat diversity foraged predominantly at open canopy forest, which may fulfil best the requirements of several distinct functional groups (guilds) of bats. ...