Effectiveness of an acoustic lure for surveying bats in British woodlands

By D. Hill, F. Greenaway. 2005

90 citations recorded by the source corpus.

ABSTRACT1. A field experiment was used to test the effectiveness of a synthesized bat call as an acousticlure to attract bats into mist nets in woodlands in southeast England. The stimulus wasmodelled on a social call of the rare Bechstein’s bat Myotis bechsteinii . 2. In the Test condition, when the synthesized call was played, 23 bats of four species werecaptured, including six Bechstein’s bats. In the Control condition, when no calls were played,only one bat was caught. 3. The bat call synthesizer is an effective tool for increasing capture rates for bats. Used aspart of a systematic survey programme, it has the potential to provide the first baseline dataon the distribution of bats in British woodlands. Keywords : Bechstein’s bat, conservation, Myotis bechsteinii , survey technique, woodland INTRODUCTION Woodlands are important habitats for British bats, providing roost sites, cover and foragingareas for a variety of species. However, the extent to which each species uses woodlands isonly partially understood because of the difficulties involved in recording and monitoringbats in these complex environments. Microchiropteran bats are difficult to survey in mosthabitats, as they are nocturnal, small-bodied and fast-moving. The two main approachesinvolve counting bats at roost and hibernation sites and monitoring of the bats’ ultrasonicecholocation calls (e.g. Walsh,

Subfields: Developmental Biology, Ecology, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

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