Author: Phillip Lee ArantPublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 94
Book Description
Effects of Shelterwood and Patch Cut Harvests on a Post White-nose Syndrome Bat Community in the Cumberland Plateau in Eastern Kentucky
Author: Phillip Lee ArantThe Effects of Shelterwood Harvests on Bat Populations and Forest Structure in Ohio Oak-Hickory Forests
Author: Marne Avina TitchenellPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Bats
Languages : en
Pages : 258
Book Description
Abstract: Forest management practices, such as harvesting, can greatly influence bat habitat relationships. Such practices can affect the microclimate and physical structure of the forest, foraging opportunities, and the availability of roost sites and prey. Research in eastern forests is needed to provide managers with the knowledge and skills to properly and effectively manage for bats and their habitat while still achieving forest management goals. One of these goals is the restoration of declining oak communities with regeneration methods, such as shelterwood harvests. This research examined bat activity responses to initial shelterwood harvests with different retention levels (50% and 70%) of the original basal area. Bats were acoustically monitored and captured by the use of mistnets in the summer of June 2006 through August 2006 in harvested and unharvested areas. Overall general activity differed (p = 0.004) among harvested and unharvested areas with the greatest amount of activity occurring within the harvested areas. There were no differences in overall bat activity between different retention levels. Red bats (Lasiurus borealis), big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus), and silver-haired bats (Lasionycteris noctivagans) were detected most in the harvested areas, and had low activity in the unharvested areas. Red bats, big brown bats, and silver-haired bats were detected equally in the two retention levels. Eastern pipistrelles (Pipistrellus subflavus) and myotis (Myotis sp.) were detected equally among both retention levels and the unharvested areas. A method was developed to quantify the amount of volume of woody plant material vertically through the forest canopy. The results of this method were compared to overall and species bat activity. Overall bat activity decreased rapidly at volumes exceeding 148.4 meters per hectare (m3/ha) in the understory (0-3 meters (m) above ground). The probably of detecting a red bat decreased by 50% at volumes exceeding 1500 m3/ha in the understory to mid-canopy (3-6 m), while big brown and silver-haired bat activity was detected most when volumes at 3-6 m in height were less than 100 m3/ha. Activity rates of Myotis species and eastern pipistrelles were not sensitive to volume of obstruction at any level. Use of additional forest characteristics such as number of snags is recommended. This research suggests that areas harvested for the purposed of restoring oak communities can provide valuable foraging ground for multiple species of bats. Bats require a diversity of landscapes, and harvesting prescriptions should allocate area of high structural density in additions to the land being harvested. This research provides a framework for the management of bat populations in southern Ohio, allowing a unique opportunity for additional rigorous research in the future.
Post-white-nose Syndrome Bat Communities in the National Capital Region
Author: Sabrina DeeleyEffects of White-Nose Syndrome on Bat Diets and Interspecific Competition
Author: Derek MorningstarPublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
Competition is commonly invoked to explain variation in abundance, activity patterns, and resource use, but is difficult to detect in nature. Introduction of white-nose syndrome (WNS) in bats provides a natural experiment to test the impact of interspecific competition on bat communities. Acoustic monitoring at locations in Southern Ontario showed an increase in activity of Big Brown Bats (Eptesicus fuscus) and corresponding decline in the activity of Little Brown Myotis (Myotis lucifugus), following the introduction of WNS. Next generation sequencing of bat stomachs and guano in Southern Ontario before and after WNS allowed for the characterization of diet changes of these species. As a function of competitive release, E. fuscus consumed a wider breadth of prey and many of the insect species once consumed by M. lucifugus, including several pest insects. These results suggest that interspecific competition has a detectable effect on bat communities in Southern Ontario.
White-nose Syndrome in Bats Response Plan
Author: Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Bats
Languages : en
Pages : 16
Book Description
“White-nose syndrome” (WNS) is an emerging fungal disease of hibernating North American bat species. To date, WNS has likely killed between 5.7 and 6.7 million hibernating bats in caves and inactive mines in the eastern USA, and has contributed to the imperilment of some bat populations and species. The WNS fungus (Geomyces destructans) has the potential to kill individuals of many of the 18 bat species native to Colorado. Bats are ecologically and economically important, and measures to prevent the spread of WNS and minimize its impacts on native bat species are clearly warranted.
Long-Term Impacts of an Emerging Disease, White-Nose Syndrome
Author: Tina L. ChengPublisher:
ISBN: 9780355334098
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 122
Book Description
Emerging infectious diseases can place severe pressures on wildlife populations, leading to major population declines, local extirpation, and species extinctions. However, variability in disease impacts, existing among species and across a spatial and temporal scale, can help us identify species or populations persisting with disease either via resistance, tolerance, pathogen evasion, or by existing within environmental refugia. Understanding mechanisms leading to host persistence can inform conservation management priorities and strategies. White-nose Syndrome (WNS) is a recently emerged disease caused by the fungal pathogen, Pseudogymnoascus destructans (Pd), that has led to severe declines in hibernating bat populations in North America. This work examines patterns and mechanisms associated with variability in WNS impacts with implications for the conservation of affected species. My first chapter investigates spatial heterogeneity in initial impacts of Pd spread across half of continental North America. We found that WNS-related impacts were lessened in the southwestern regions of North America, suggesting potential spatial refugia from WNS-related impacts but only for Perimyotis subflavus. We found that annual air surface temperatures driving Pd growth explained, in part, this spatial variation in WNS-related impacts. Despite evidence for lessened WNS-related declines in the southwest, impacts to bat populations are severe throughout North America for most bat species. My second chapter examines colonies of M. lucifugus that have experienced variability in declines over time, persisting potentially due to host-specific responses. Specifically, I investigate if differences in early winter fat reserves could explain survivorship and persistence of M. lucifugus colonies with WNS. We found that bats persisting with WNS in 2016 were significantly fatter than bats colonies sampled during WNS arrival in 2008 and 2009 at four out of our six sampled sites. At another two sites, we found that bats were either fatter in 2008 and 2009 compared to 2016. We used hibernation energetic models to estimate the amount of fat afforded to survival and found that increased fat reserves from bats measured in 2016 could reduce mortality by 65%. These data suggest that increased fat reserves can explain, in part, the persistence of M. lucifugus colonies with WNS. Lastly, my third chapter experimentally investigates one possible cause of variability in WNS impacts, variation host susceptibility via protective bacteria in the skin microbiome. In this chapter, I explore the efficacy of using a probiotic bacterium, harvested from the skin of a species experiencing lessened WNS impacts, Eptesicus fuscus , as a conservation tool applied to a more highly affected bat species, M. lucifugus. We found relative increases in survival for probiotic-treated groups compared to our sham control group. We also found evidence for decreased fungal infection and severity in probiotic-treated groups. Our results suggest that probiotic treatment can reduce incidence of White-nose Syndrome in M. lucifugus although timing of treatment is an important factor. Together, this work finds that variability in spatial, species-specific, and temporal impacts from WNS can inform conservation efforts. Namely, this work suggests that bat conservation should involve a multi-pronged approach that protects colonies where bats are persisting with WNS via habitat restoration, and potentially treating bats for threatened populations not persisting with WNS. Given the continued threat of WNS to bats as it spreads throughout North America, using a variety of tools to combat this disease may be critical to prevent disease-induced extinction and the local extirpation of affected bat species.
Bats of the United States and Canada
Author: Michael J. HarveyPublisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421403005
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 219
Book Description
Honorable Mention, Popular Science, 2012 PROSE Awards, Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers The only mammals capable of true flight, bats are among the world’s most fascinating creatures. This accessible guide to the forty-seven species of bats found in the United States and Canada captures and explains the amazing diversity of these marvels of evolution. A wide variety of bat species live in the United States and Canada, ranging from the California leaf-nosed bat to the Florida bonneted bat, from the eastern small-footed bat to the northern long-eared bat. The authors provide an overview of bat classification, biology, feeding behavior, habitats, migration, and reproduction. They discuss the ever-increasing danger bats face from destruction of habitat, wind turbines, chemical toxicants, and devastating diseases like white-nose syndrome, which is killing millions of cave bats in North America. Illustrated species accounts include range maps and useful identification tips. Written by three of the world’s leading bat experts and featuring J. Scott Altenbach's stunning photographs, this fact-filled and easy-to-use book is the most comprehensive and up-to-date account of bats in the U.S. and Canada.
Bats in Forests
Author: Michael J. LackiPublisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801884993
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 350
Book Description
Although bats are often thought of as cave dwellers, many species depend on forests for all or part of the year. Of the 45 species of bats in North America, more than half depend on forests, using the bark of trees, tree cavities, or canopy foliage as roosting sites. Over the past two decades it has become increasingly clear that bat conservation and management are strongly linked to the health of forests within their range. Initially driven by concern for endangered species—the Indiana bat, for example—forest ecologists, timber managers, government agencies, and conservation organizations have been altering management plans and silvicultural practices to better accommodate bat species. Bats in Forests presents the work of a variety of experts who address many aspects of the ecology and conservation of bats. The chapter authors describe bat behavior, including the selection of roosts, foraging patterns, and seasonal migration as they relate to forests. They also discuss forest management and its influence on bat habitat. Both public lands and privately owned forests are considered, as well as techniques for monitoring bat populations and activity. The important role bats play in the ecology of forests—from control of insects to nutrient recycling—is revealed by a number of authors. Bat ecologists, bat conservationists, forest ecologists, and forest managers will find in this book an indispensable synthesis of the topics that concern them.
The Green-striped Mapleworm
Author: Louis F. WilsonPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Dryocampa rubicunda
Languages : en
Pages : 4
Book Description
The green-striped mapleworm. (Anisota rubicunda (Fab.)), a native of North America, is distributed widely throughout the eastern half of the United States and the southern parts of adjacent Canadian Provinces. Its southern range extends from the Carolina coast to the gulf coast in Alabama and Mississippi. It has been recorded as far west as Nebraska and Kansas. The insect causes heavy defoliation throughout its range but is most destructive near its southwestern limits.
Author: