High temporal resolution data reveal low bat and insect activity over managed meadows in central Europe.

Increasing agriculture and pesticide use have led to declines in insect populations and biodiversity worldwide. In addition to insect diversity, it is also important to consider insect abundance, due to the importance of insects as food for species at higher trophic levels such as bats. We monitored spatiotemporal variation in abundance of nocturnal flying insects over meadows, a common open landscape structure in central Europe, and correlated it with bat feeding activity.

Socio-economic variables improve accuracy and change spatial predictions in species distribution models.

In an era marked by increasing anthropogenic pressure, understanding the relations between human activities and wildlife is crucial for understanding ecological patterns, effective conservation, and management strategies. Here, we explore the potential and usefulness of socio-economic variables in species distribution modelling (SDM), focusing on their impact on the occurrence of wild mammals in Poland. Beyond the environmental factors commonly considered in SDM, like land-use, the study tests the importance of socio-economic characteristics of local human societies, such as age, income, working sector, gender, education, and village characteristics for explaining distribution of diverse mammalian groups, including carnivores, ungulates, rodents, soricids, and bats.

Mating without intromission in a bat.

Copulatory behaviours stand as cornerstones of sexual selection, yet they remain mysterious in many species. Because of their nocturnal and elusive lifestyle, the copulatory behaviours of bats have been mostly overlooked. Several aspects of bat reproduction differ from other mammals (e.

Bat responses to climate change: a systematic review.

Understanding how species respond to climate change is key to informing vulnerability assessments and designing effective conservation strategies, yet research efforts on wildlife responses to climate change fail to deliver a representative overview due to inherent biases. Bats are a species-rich, globally distributed group of organisms that are thought to be particularly sensitive to the effects of climate change because of their high surface-to-volume ratios and low reproductive rates. We systematically reviewed the literature on bat responses to climate change to provide an overview of the current state of knowledge, identify research gaps and biases and highlight future research needs.

Flexible energy-saving strategies in female temperate-zone bats.

Torpor is characterized by an extreme reduction in metabolism and a common energy-saving strategy of heterothermic animals. Torpor is often associated with cold temperatures, but in the last decades, more diverse and flexible forms of torpor have been described. For example, tropical bat species maintain a low metabolism and heart rate at high ambient and body temperatures.

Emerging technologies revolutionise insect ecology and monitoring.

Insects are the most diverse group of animals on Earth, but their small size and high diversity have always made them challenging to study. Recent technological advances have the potential to revolutionise insect ecology and monitoring. We describe the state of the art of four technologies (computer vision, acoustic monitoring, radar, and molecular methods), and assess their advantages, current limitations, and future potential.

Energy allocation shifts from sperm production to self-maintenance at low temperatures in male bats.

The ability of animals to produce endogenous heat provides a buffer against environmental changes but also incurs high energetic costs. Especially small endothermic mammals have high energy demands. Some temperate-zone species (heterotherms) regularly use torpor, which slows down their entire metabolism but also potentially delays reproduction, to compensate for this.

Food restriction delays seasonal sexual maturation but does not increase torpor use in male bats.

Balancing energy budgets can be challenging, especially in periods of food shortage, adverse weather conditions and increased energy demand due to reproduction. Bats have particularly high energy demands compared to other mammals and regularly use torpor to save energy. However, while torpor limits energy expenditure, it can also downregulate important processes, such as sperm production.

Penis size and sperm quality, are all bats grey in the dark?

Penises play a key role in sperm transport and in stimulating female genitals. This should impact post-copulatory competition, and expose penis characteristics to sexual selective pressures. Studies of male genitalia have repeatedly reported negative static allometries, which mean that, within species, large males have disproportionally small genitals when compared with smaller individuals.

Silence is not golden: the hissing calls of tits affect the behaviour of a nest predator.

Abstract: Nest predation is one of the most important mortality factors of birds. Field observations showed that tits (Paridae) produce hissing calls and, usually, have lower breeding losses than nesting flycatchers, which do not make such calls. We hypothesise that differences in fledgling success can be directly attributed to the vocal reaction of tits.

Do greater mouse-eared bats experience a trade-off between energy conservation and learning?

Bats, some species of rodents and some birds are able to save energy during the summer period by decreasing their body temperature and falling into torpor. Some studies indicate that torpor prevents sleeping and causes effects similar to sleep deprivation. Impairment of processes stabilizing memory slows down learning accuracy and speed.

Foraging ecology predicts learning performance in insectivorous bats.

Bats are unusual among mammals in showing great ecological diversity even among closely related species and are thus well suited for studies of adaptation to the ecological background. Here we investigate whether behavioral flexibility and simple- and complex-rule learning performance can be predicted by foraging ecology. We predict faster learning and higher flexibility in animals hunting in more complex, variable environments than in animals hunting in more simple, stable environments.

Modelling sensory limitation: the role of tree selection, memory and information transfer in bats' roost searching strategies.

Sensory limitation plays an important role in the evolution of animal behaviour. Animals have to find objects of interest (e.g.

Hibernation does not affect memory retention in bats.

Long-term memory can be critically important for animals in a variety of contexts, and yet the extreme reduction in body temperature in hibernating animals alters neurochemistry and may therefore impair brain function. Behavioural studies on memory impairment associated with hibernation have been almost exclusively conducted on ground squirrels (Rodentia) and provide conflicting results, including clear evidence for memory loss. Here, we for the first time tested memory retention after hibernation for a vertebrate outside rodents-bats (Chiroptera).

The sensory basis of roost finding in a forest bat, Nyctalus noctula.

Tree cavities are a critical resource for most forest-dwelling bats. Yet, it is not known how bats search for new sites and, in particular, find entrances to cavities. Here, we evaluated the importance of different sensory channels for the detection of tree roosts by the noctule bat Nyctalus noctula.