Study on Population and Roosting Ecology of Bats in and Around Chikkamagaluru

Abstract

Bats spend over half of their lives in their roost environment, so these eventually play a prominent role in their ecology and evolution. Roosts are vital to the bats as it is plays where they actively get involved in mating, rearing offspring’s and facilitate the social living. With this background, the present study has been planned to evaluate the ecobiology of the bats in the vicinity of Chikkamagaluru. It is situated roughly in the south western part of Karnataka exists in mid-Western Ghats. The population dynamics of bat roosts were studied by emergence Count and direct roost count method. The roosting trees were identified by using standard botanical taxonomic keys. Bats roosted much more in trees belonging to Fabaceae family (1,527) followed by Myrtaceae family (1,180), Moraceae family (519), Bignoniaceae family (253), Sapindiaceae family (202), Proteaceae family (103), and very less population found in Poaceae family (21). Bat roosted much more in Pipal tree (40.72%), Red buckeye (26.03%), Banyan tree (19.97%), Rubber tree (6.18%), Avenue tree (3.22%), Bamboo (2.7%) and very less population in Tamarind tree (1.15%) in rural side of the study area. Where as in the city premises bats roosted much more in Nilgiri tree (38.19%), followed by Blue jacaranda tree (29.72%), White locust tree (25.26%) and very less roosting of bats in Silver tree (6.81%).In the present survey the population of bats and hosting trees varies from one locality to another locality. This is because of variation in vegetation, environmental condition and more or less adoptability of food and water and the less or more predators. The present study showed that bats preferred to roost in taller and larger trees having greater canopy areas as roosting sites, because these trees could provide more space for their large colonies.