Impact of night-time crop harvesting on bat activity in agricultural landscape

Abstract

We investigated activity of bats in agricultural landscape in relation to crop harvesting during the night. We conducted bat monitoring along four transects (8 km in total) located in Western Poland from July to September over three years. We used a Batbox detector for the assessment of bat activity. We collected data on two species (Nyctalus noctula, Eptesicus serotinus) and a group of the genus Pipistrellus. The generalised linear mixed model revealed that activity of N. noctula and E. serotinus in studied fields was significantly higher during nights of crop harvesting as compared to other nights, whereas species of the genus Pipistrellus did not show such a response. During night-time crop harvesting, activity indices of E. serotinus and N. noctula were, respectively, 12.5-fold and 5.6-fold higher than those during non-harvesting nights. Moreover, Pipistrellus bats showed a linear decrease in their activity from July to September. Activity of the three species was not correlated and activity of one sp...