Temples and bats in a homogeneous agriculture landscape: Importance of microhabitat availability, disturbance and land use for bat conservation.

ABSTRACT: Cave-dwelling bats widely use anthropogenic structures such as temples in south Asia as roosting and nursery sites. Such roosts are constantly under threat, even more so after the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the importance of such roosts, there is no detailed understanding of what makes temples favorable for bats and the critical factors for their persistence. Here we relate temple microhabitat characteristics and land use around ancient temples (>400 years) to bat species richness and abundance in the Tamiraparani river basin of south India. Temples were selected for sampling along the river basin based on logistics and permission to access them. We counted bats at the roost in the mornings and late afternoons from inside the temples. Temple characteristics such as dark rooms, walkways, cr

SUBMITTER: Ganesh T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9278754 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature