| Summary: | The barbastelle ( Barbastella barbastellus ) is one of Britain’s rarest mammals, primarily due to its narrow ecological niche and historical habitat loss. Significant data gaps remain owing to the inherent difficulties associated with their detection, hindering effective population assessments across their entire range, which predominately encompasses central and southern Europe. In this thesis, a combination of ecological techniques (i.e., acoustic surveys, citizen science, radio-tracking, infrared imaging) was used to develop novel approaches for understanding B. barbastellus distribution and behaviour. The research outlines how these approaches can be applied to improve survey designs and provide new insights into bat ecology. Our understanding of bats, especially for species that mainly roost in trees, is impeded by the difficulties of locating and studying maternity colonies. However, peaks of bat activity near sunset may be evidence that a colony is roosting nearby and therefore highlight key areas for conservation action. This ecological relationship is widely acknowledged, yet a standardised method has not been developed for surveying and interpreting these activity patterns. I therefore developed a novel approach which showed that provided a sufficient number of acoustic detectors are deployed, activity levels (number of recordings within an hour of sunset) may be used to identify sites with a high probability of supporting roosting maternity colonies of B. barbastellus . This methodology was implemented across 77 woodlands in England by citizen scientists trained in acoustic detector deployment. Follow-up trapping surveys were conducted at 13 sites identified as having high colony potential, as identified through the acoustic surveys. Radio-tracking of female and juvenile B. barbastellus bats to roost trees revealed the presence of five previously unknown maternity colonies, confirming the real-world applicability of the approach. This cost-effective method has the potential to be widely deployed and ...
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