Bat activity and species richness in different land‐use types in and around Chome Nature Forest Reserve, Tanzania

Current and future environmental suitability for bats hosting potential zoonotic pathogens in rural Kenya

Synanthropic bats live in close proximity to humans and domestic animals, creating opportunities for potential pathogen spillover. We explored environmental correlates of occurrence for a widely distributed synanthropic African bat, Mops pumilus-a species associated with potential zoonotic viruses-and estimated current and future environmental suitability in the Taita Hills region and surrounding plains in Taita-Taveta County in southeast Kenya. To project future environmental suitability, we used four Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 general circulation models that capture temperature and precipitation changes for East Africa. The models were parameterized with empirical capture data of M. pumilus collected from 2016 to 2023, combined with satellite-based vegetation, topographic, and climatic data to identify responses to environmental factors. The strongest drivers for current environmental suitability for M. pumilus were short distance to rivers, higher precipitation during the driest months, sparse vegetation-often related to urban areas-and low yearly temperature variation. To predict current and future areas suitable for M. pumilus, we created ensemble niche models, which yielded excellent predictive accuracies. Current suitable environments were located southward from the central and southern Taita Hills and surrounding plains, overlapping with urban centers with the highest human population densities in the area. Future projections for 2050 indicated a moderate increase in suitability range in the southern portion of the region and surrounding plains in human-dominated areas; however, projections for 2090 showed a slight contraction of environmental suitability for M. pumilus, potentially due to the negative impact of increased temperatures. These results show how environmental changes are likely to impact the human exposure risk of bat-borne pathogens and could help public health officials develop strategies to prevent these risks in Taita-Taveta County, Kenya, and other parts of Africa.

Seasonal Activity of Fruit Bats in a Monoculture Rubber and Oil Palm Plantation in the Southern Philippines

The increasing expansion of monoculture plantations poses a major threat to Asian tropical biodiversity. Yet, in many countries such as the Philippines, the ability of species to persist within plantations has never been explored. We studied the seasonal activity and response of fruit bats in two types of monocultural plantations (rubber and oil palm) in the Southern Philippines from 2016–17 for 12 months. Our mist-netting and monitoring data showed that both plantations can support cosmopolitan species of fruit bats (Cynopterus brachyotis, Eonycteris spelaea, Macroglossus minimus, Ptenochirus jagori, and Rousettus amplexicaudatus), yet a significant variation in the abundance and guild distribution between plantations was observed. Rubber hosted a higher bat abundance than oil palm, which may be influenced by better habitat structure of the matrix (e.g., presence of orchard and fruit plantations) and practices occurring in the rubber plantation. We find that, among seasonal climatic variables, temperature showed significant negative effects on fruit bat abundance. Our results suggest that although monoculture plantations host low diversity (i.e., richness and endemism) they still support generalists which are still ecologically important species. Furthermore, wildlife-friendly commercial plantation practices could both enhance economic growth and biodiversity conservation in the Philippines. Our data both provide the potential for long-term monitoring in the Philippines and highlight the need for more comprehensive monitoring of other bat functional groups and their ability to transverse plantations to provide a more in-depth understanding of the roles and impacts of plantations and other land-use changes.

Effective detection and identification of sheath-tailed bats of Australian forests and woodlands

Assessing the risk to threatened species of population decline from anthropogenic disturbances is challenging when there are issues with species identification, and little is known of their biology, distribution, population size, and habitat preference. The bare-rumped sheath-tailed bat (Saccolaimus saccolaimus) is one such species that has a poorly defined distribution over two broad areas of northern Australia. Environmental impact assessments are expected to consider the possibility of its presence in intervening areas outside the known distributions. Our study presents new empirical data that can assist with detection of S. saccolaimus across the entire expanse of northern Australia, provides a critical analysis of acoustics-based identification of the species, and assessed presence within the potentially high value habitat of tall Eucalyptus tetrodonta-dominated forest on the western side of Cape York Peninsula using a combination of trapping and acoustic recordings. Capture of other Saccolaimus species was the greatest of any survey conducted to date in Australia, demonstrating that the capture of these high-flying bat species in tall forest habitats can be relatively effective with mist net arrays hoisted into the tree canopy. In addition, reference echolocation call collections from the focal trapping area plus other locations across northern Australia allowed characterisation and comparison of the calls of most low-frequency-emitting (LFE) echolocating bat species of northern Australia. In addition to separation of species-specific search phase call types using multivariate statistics, a compilation of features from search phase, approach phase and feeding buzz echolocation calls will help distinguish S. saccolaimus from most other LFE species. However, the similarity of the echolocation calls of S. mixtus and S. saccolaimus prevented them from being distinguished from one another. A multi-method approach that emulates the present study and incorporates our recommendations and cautions will lead to robustness in ecological studies and greater clarity in environmental impact assessments.

Citizen science implements the first intensive acoustics-based survey of insectivorous bat species across the Murray–Darling Basin of South Australia

Effective land management and biodiversity conservation policy relies on good records of native species occurrence and habitat association, but for many animal groups these data are inadequate. In the Murray–Darling Basin (MDB), the most environmentally and economically important catchment in Australia, knowledge gaps exist on the occurrence and habitat associations of insectivorous bat species. We relied on the interest and effort of citizen scientists to assist with the most intensive insectivorous bat survey ever undertaken in the MDB region of South Australia. We used an existing network of Natural Resource Management groups to connect interested citizens and build on historical observations of bat species using a fleet of 30 Anabat Swift bat detectors. The survey effort more than doubled the number of bat occurrence records for the area in two years (3000 records; cf. 2693 records between 1890 and 2018; freely available through the Atlas of Living Australia). We used multinomial logistic regression to look at the relationship between three types of environmental covariates: flight space, nearest open water source and vegetation type. There were no differences in species richness among the environmental covariates. The records have been, and will continue to be, used to inform government land management policy, more accurately predict the impact of development proposals on bat populations, and update conservation assessments for microbat species. A social survey tool also showed that participation in the project led to positive behaviours, and planned positive behaviours, for improving bat habitat on private land.