Water and elevation are more important than burn severity in predicting bat activity at multiple scales in a post-wildfire landscape.

ABSTRACT: Bats are among the most widespread mammals on Earth, and are subject to habitat change, loss, and other disturbances such as fire. Wildfire causes rapid changes in vegetation that affect habitat use. However, the spatial scale at which these changes affect bats depends on their use of habitat elements. Three years post wildfire, we assessed how burn severity, water, landform type, elevation, vegetation type, and roads affected use by bats of a forest landscape at multiple spatial scales. We deployed acoustic detectors at randomly selected locations within a 217,712 ha wildfire boundary in Arizona. We classified echolocation calls to species or group and calculated an activity index by adjusting the calls per hour. We conducted a multi-scale analysis of landscape structure and composition a

SUBMITTER: Starbuck CA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7141652 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature