A Review of European Owls as Predators of Bats
Fossil evidence indicates that owls have been preying on bats from as far back as the Pleistocene. Overall, bats form quite small portions (i.e. trace to 0.2%) of the diets (by prey frequency) of European owls. An assessment of dietary studies and anecdotal accounts reveals that five species of Euro...
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ftintech:oai:intechopen.com:70355 2023-05-15T18:27:34+02:00 A Review of European Owls as Predators of Bats Sieradzki, Alan Mikkola, Heimo 2020-01-15 https://mts.intechopen.com/articles/show/title/a-review-of-european-owls-as-predators-of-bats https://doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.90330 en eng IntechOpen ISBN:978-1-78984-053-7 https://mts.intechopen.com/articles/show/title/a-review-of-european-owls-as-predators-of-bats doi:10.5772/intechopen.90330 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ CC-BY https://www.intechopen.com/books/8793 Owls Chapter, Part Of Book 2020 ftintech https://doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.90330 2021-11-13T19:50:47Z Fossil evidence indicates that owls have been preying on bats from as far back as the Pleistocene. Overall, bats form quite small portions (i.e. trace to 0.2%) of the diets (by prey frequency) of European owls. An assessment of dietary studies and anecdotal accounts reveals that five species of European owls, the Eurasian scops owl Otus scops, Pygmy owl Glaucidium passerinum, Tengmalm’s owl Aegolius funereus, little owl Athene noctua and Ural owl Strix uralensis, rarely feed on bats (with less than 0.1−0.4%) and a further two species, short-eared owl Asio flammeus and eagle owl Bubo bubo, may only take bats occasionally, while three species, long-eared owl Asio otus, barn owl Tyto alba and tawny owl Strix aluco, feed on bats more frequently. In this study, a total of 19,864 recorded bats have been preyed upon by these owls, with as many as 48 bat species being identified. Barn and tawny owls have captured most of this total (47.1 and 41.9%), followed by the long-eared owl (7.6%), while short-eared and eagle owls take similar amounts of bats (1.1 and 1.7%, respectively). Owl predation on bats deserves future research because it may help contribute to our knowledge on bat biodiversity and distribution and possibly identify an additional risk for small populations of endangered bats. Other/Unknown Material Strix uralensis Ural Owl IntechOpen (E-Books) |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
IntechOpen (E-Books) |
op_collection_id |
ftintech |
language |
English |
topic |
Owls |
spellingShingle |
Owls Sieradzki, Alan Mikkola, Heimo A Review of European Owls as Predators of Bats |
topic_facet |
Owls |
description |
Fossil evidence indicates that owls have been preying on bats from as far back as the Pleistocene. Overall, bats form quite small portions (i.e. trace to 0.2%) of the diets (by prey frequency) of European owls. An assessment of dietary studies and anecdotal accounts reveals that five species of European owls, the Eurasian scops owl Otus scops, Pygmy owl Glaucidium passerinum, Tengmalm’s owl Aegolius funereus, little owl Athene noctua and Ural owl Strix uralensis, rarely feed on bats (with less than 0.1−0.4%) and a further two species, short-eared owl Asio flammeus and eagle owl Bubo bubo, may only take bats occasionally, while three species, long-eared owl Asio otus, barn owl Tyto alba and tawny owl Strix aluco, feed on bats more frequently. In this study, a total of 19,864 recorded bats have been preyed upon by these owls, with as many as 48 bat species being identified. Barn and tawny owls have captured most of this total (47.1 and 41.9%), followed by the long-eared owl (7.6%), while short-eared and eagle owls take similar amounts of bats (1.1 and 1.7%, respectively). Owl predation on bats deserves future research because it may help contribute to our knowledge on bat biodiversity and distribution and possibly identify an additional risk for small populations of endangered bats. |
format |
Other/Unknown Material |
author |
Sieradzki, Alan Mikkola, Heimo |
author_facet |
Sieradzki, Alan Mikkola, Heimo |
author_sort |
Sieradzki, Alan |
title |
A Review of European Owls as Predators of Bats |
title_short |
A Review of European Owls as Predators of Bats |
title_full |
A Review of European Owls as Predators of Bats |
title_fullStr |
A Review of European Owls as Predators of Bats |
title_full_unstemmed |
A Review of European Owls as Predators of Bats |
title_sort |
review of european owls as predators of bats |
publisher |
IntechOpen |
publishDate |
2020 |
url |
https://mts.intechopen.com/articles/show/title/a-review-of-european-owls-as-predators-of-bats https://doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.90330 |
genre |
Strix uralensis Ural Owl |
genre_facet |
Strix uralensis Ural Owl |
op_source |
https://www.intechopen.com/books/8793 |
op_relation |
ISBN:978-1-78984-053-7 https://mts.intechopen.com/articles/show/title/a-review-of-european-owls-as-predators-of-bats doi:10.5772/intechopen.90330 |
op_rights |
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.90330 |
_version_ |
1766209693497163776 |