Bat Habitat Ecology Using Remote Acoustical Detectors at the Army National Guard Maneuver Training Center - Fort Pickett, Blackstone, Virginia

Bats occupy diverse and unique niches and are regarded as important components in maintaining ecosystem health. They are major consumers of nocturnal insects, serve as pollinators, seed disperser, and provide important economic benefits as consumers of agricultural and forest pest insects. Bats have been proposed as good indicators of the integrity of natural communities because they integrate a number of resource attributes and may show population declines quickly if a resource attribute is missing. Establishing community- and population-level data, and understanding species interactions is especially important in changing landscapes and for species whose populations levels are threatened by outside factors of anthropomorphic disturbance from hibernacular visitation to energy production and fungal pathogens. For these reasons I have set out to establish habitat use patterns, detection probabilities, spatial and temporal occupancy, and investigate species interactions. This thesis is broken down into three distinct chapters each intended to be a stand-alone document. The first establishes the basic ecology from natural history accounts, provides an overview of the various sampling strategies, and gives a comprehensive description of the study area. The seconds sets out to identify the factors influencing detection probabilities and occupancy of six sympatric bats species and provide insight into habitat use patterns. The third examines spatial and temporal activity patterns and investigates species interactions. This study can provide understanding into the secretive and poorly understood patterns of free flying bats across the landscape. It can also deliver useful information to land managers regarding potential changes in landscape practices for the conservation of bat species.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Fisheries and Wildlife Sciences

Department dc:contributor.department

Fisheries and Wildlife Sciences

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2012

Author dc:creator

• St Germain, Michael J.

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Kelly, Marcella J.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Stauffer, Dean F.
• Ford, W. Mark

• two species modeling
• temporal overlapping
• spatial co-occurrence
• species interaction factor
• proportion of area occupied
• Perimyotis subflavus
• occupancy
• Nycticeius humeralis
• Myotis septentrionalis
• Myotis lucifugus
• military lands
• Lasiurus borealis
• Eptesicus fuscus
• detection probability
• AnaBat
• activity index

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language.iso

en_US

Dc Identifier Other

etd-05162012-122931

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/76770