LANDSCAPE SCALE ROOSTING HABITS OF MALE SILVER-HAIRED BATS IN NORTHEASTERN CALIFORNIA | |||
| Alexander Lewis; Independent researcher; acl431@humboldt.edu; Ted Weller, Dr. Ho Yi Wan | |||
Silver-haired bats (Lasionycteris noctivagans) are one of the most widely distributed forest bats in North America. Although wildfires have been increasing across their range, how they respond to wildfire is understudied. Previous studies on silver-haired bats and fire focused on roosting behavior in low-severity controlled burns or used acoustics to understand activity levels post-wildfire. Quantifying how silver-haired bats use the physical structures created by high-severity wildfires and the landscape features in which they occur is critical in the face of rapidly shifting fire regimes. During the summers of 2023-2025 I radio-tracked male silver-haired bats to 58 roosts on the Lassen National Forest. I found that with increasing diameter at breast height and decreasing bark remaining trees had higher odds of being used as a roost than random trees. Little work has been done on how landscape composition and configuration affect habitat use by bats. With fire frequency and severity forecasted to increase, we must understand how fire impacted areas are used by bats at both the roost and landscape scales to inform post-fire management efforts. | |||
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