Microhabitat of Myotis leibii summer roosts at the southwestern periphery of their range
Abstract
Understanding microhabitat use is needed to make sound conservation decisions for at-risk, patchy-habitat specialists, such as rock-habitat specialists. Rock habitats offer unique microclimatic refugia for reptiles and mammals. Eastern small-footed bats (Myotis leibii (Audubon and Bachman, 1842)) use rock roosts during the summer, but data on these summer roosts are lacking for this species classified as (critically) imperiled in several US states and Canadian provinces and globally endangered. Our goal was to characterize the structure and microclimate of Myotis leibii roosts at the southwestern periphery of their range. We predicted that Myotis leibii roost temperatures would be warmer and less variable than ambient temperatures and that solitary bats would use horizontal roosts cooler at night, whereas maternity group roosts would be vertical and warmer at night. During summers of 2019 and 2020, we recorded physical (e.g., width) and temperature attributes of 58 Myotis leibii roosts at 16 sites in the Ouachita Mountains. Crevice roosts of Myotis leibii had narrow dimensions like elsewhere in their range and roost temperatures (measured with iButtons) were warmer and more variable than ambient temperatures. Group roosts were larger and had more stable temperatures than solitary roosts. These findings may be useful for assessing population threats, monitoring roost suitability, identifying roost-rich areas that need protection, and even planning artificial roost structures where natural roosts are limited.
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Information & Authors
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Published In
Canadian Journal of Zoology
Volume 101 • Number 9 • September 2023
Pages: 754 - 763
History
Received: 16 September 2022
Accepted: 11 April 2023
Accepted manuscript online: 23 May 2023
Version of record online: 19 June 2023
Copyright
© 2023 Authors Kearny, Risch, and Rolland. This paper was written and prepared in part by a US Government employee on official time. Permission for reuse (free in most cases) can be obtained from copyright.com.
Data Availability Statement
Code and data generated or analyzed during this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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Authors
Author Contributions
Conceptualization: RWP, TSR, VR
Data curation: VMK
Formal analysis: VMK
Funding acquisition: RWP, TSR, VR
Investigation: VMK
Methodology: VMK
Project administration: VR
Resources: RWP
Supervision: VR
Validation: VR
Writing – original draft: VMK
Writing – review & editing: VMK, RWP, TSR, VR
Competing Interests
The authors declare there are no competing interests.
Funding Information
This project was funded in part by the State Wildlife Grants Program (Grant #AR-T-F18AF01171) of the US Fish and Wildlife Service through an agreement with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. Additional funding was provided by the Arkansas Audubon Society.
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Valerie M. Kearny, Roger W. Perry, Thomas S. Risch, and Virginie Rolland. 2023. Microhabitat of Myotis leibii summer roosts at the southwestern periphery of their range. Canadian Journal of Zoology.
101(9): 754-763. https://doi.org/10.1139/cjz-2022-0137
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