Responses of Bats to Forest Fragmentation in the Mississippi River Alluvial Valley, Arkansas, USA

Rex E Medlin,Thomas S Risch,Karen F Gaines,Matthew B Connior

doi:10.3390/d2101146

Abstract

Intense conversion of bottomland hardwood forests to rice and soybeans in the Mississippi River Valley of Arkansas has restricted the remaining forest to isolated fragments. Habitat fragmentation has proven to be detrimental to population sustainability of several species, and is the subject of intense study with often species and latitude specific responses. We compared both coarse land area classes and landscape fragmentation metrics from six 30 km × 30 km subsets centered on publicly owned management areas to bat captures obtained from a 2005 population study. Patch density was the strongest predictor of total captures (R2 = 0.801, p = 0.016) and of Myotis austroriparius captures (R2 = 0.856, p = 0.008). Our findings indicate that patch density and area are important predictors of bottomland bat captures.

Highlights

Habitat associations of bats historically have been studied in the United States at the micro scale.Recent works at larger scales reveal interesting relationships [1,2,3,4], including a positive relationship between woodland fragments and bat activity at a 2 km scale [1]
In the Yucatan Peninsula, Montiel et al [2] reported that species richness was similar between large and small fragments, but rate of capture was greater in large habitats than in smaller ones
We found no significant relationship between number of captures and any minimum patch size area (100, 200, and 400-m radius) investigated with the number of disjunct core area (NDCA) metric

Summary

Introduction

Habitat associations of bats historically have been studied in the United States at the micro scale. Recent works at larger scales reveal interesting relationships [1,2,3,4], including a positive relationship between woodland fragments and bat activity at a 2 km scale [1]. In the Yucatan Peninsula, Montiel et al [2] reported that species richness was similar between large and small fragments, but rate of capture was greater in large habitats than in smaller ones. A multi-scaled analysis in Paraguay revealed that the greatest number of significant bat responses occurred at the largest scale studied, with patch density and patch size negatively affecting species richness at the 5 km scale [4].

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Results

Discussion

Conclusion