Understanding bat habitat use and how bat activity changes in response to differing habitats across time and space is critical in developing and implementing effective bat conservation actions. To investigate the utility of geographic information systems (GIS) in studying bat habitat interactions, habitat delineations and bioacoustic sampling were conducted along two transects in Chautauqua County, NY (USA) from mid-May until the end of August 2013. Surveys were vehicular, and driven between 29 and 32 kmph in order to match bats' flying speed. They were conducted starting 30 min after sunset on nights where the temperature was greater than 13 °C. In total, twenty surveys were completed, and 1248 bat calls were identified to species. Mixed models regression analysis revealed significant interactions among all of the species of bat analyzed in the model. The model was supported with a secondary analysis comparing bat call density with land cover. This study supports the hypothesis that bats forage in different habitats at the species level and indicates the importance of forested areas to bats. Additionally, the methodology for this study has the potential to gather large data sets in a short period of time, while collecting data on several species of bat at once and has been shown to be useful in identifying important habitat features for bats using bioacoustics and geospatial analysis. Since the data has been collected following state guidelines, the dataset and its analysis establish a baseline for future data collection campaigns and in performing a similar analysis for other regions within the state of New York or areas worldwide.
Keywords: Bioacoustics; Chiroptera; Climate change; GIS; Habitat mapping.
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