Summer roost-tree selection by a male Indiana bat on the Fernow Experimental Forest /

Abstract

We attached a radio transmitter to an adult male Indiana bat (Myotis sodalis) in June 2001 on the Fernow Experimental Forest in the Allegheny Mountains of north-central West Virginia. The bat was tracked for 4 successive days before the transmitter failed. The bat roosted in three living trees over the study period. Two roosts used for a single night each were in large shagbark hickories (> 45 cm d.b.h.); the roost used for two successive nights was located in a large sugar maple (69.1 cm d.b.h.). Roost trees were characterized by large areas of exfoliating bark and all were canopy-dominant within surrounding stands. One shagbark hickory was a residual tree left following a patch clearcut 6 years earlier. Although few inferences can be drawn from one Indiana bat, many characteristics of this individuals’s roost selections in the central Appalachians were consistent with tree roosts observed in other regions during the nonhibernation period of this species. The majority of the Indiana bat’s (Myotis sodalis) winter hibernacula and summer maternity range is in the lower Ohio Valley and Ozark Plateau of the Midwest (Menzel et al. 2001b). However, there are 92 Priority II and III hibernacula of this endangered species in the central and southern Appalachians from northeastern Alabama to central Pennsylvania (Humphrey 1978; USDI Fish and Wildl. Serv. 1999; Menzel et al. 2001b). Summer maternity activity of female Indiana bats is believed to be rare in forest habitats in the central Appalachians of Virginia and West Virginia (Brack et al. 2001; Owen et al. 2001). However, most male Indiana bats remain in thehibernacula vicinity and use trees and snags as day roosts during late spring, summer, and early fall. Accordingly, protection of tree roosts and forested habitat around Indiana bat hibernacula in the Appalachians is important to safeguard males from direct mortality and/or harmful modification of their roosting and foraging habitat. Within the central and southern Appalachians, published roost research on male Indiana bats has been limited to a study of immediate post-hibernation emergence in the Ridge and Valley of western Virginia (Hobson and Holland 1995) and two pre-hibernation studies conducted just before and during fall “swarm” on the Cumberland Plateau in eastern Kentucky (Kiser and Elliot 1996; MacGregor et al. 1999). Although critical for natural resource managers in a region where forest management is substantial on private lands (DiGiovanni 1990) while decreasing rapidly on public lands (Ford et al. 2000), there are few data on roost characteristics of male Indiana bats during the non-hibernation spring and summer seasons. The objective of this study was to provide preliminary data on male Indiana bat day roosts in the central Appalachians of West Virginia and relate those findings to current forest management practices.