Evaluating the potential of urban areas for bat conservation with citizen science data.

Global change, including urbanisation, threatens many of the >1400 bat species. Nevertheless, certain areas within highly urbanised cities may be suitable to harbour bat populations. Thus, managing urban habitats could contribute to bat conservation.

In situ novel environment assay reveals acoustic exploration as a repeatable behavioral response in migratory bats.

Integrating information on species-specific sensory perception with spatial activity provides a high-resolution understanding of how animals explore environments, yet frequently used exploration assays commonly ignore sensory acquisition as a measure for exploration. Echolocation is an active sensing system used by hundreds of mammal species, primarily bats. As echolocation call activity can be reliably quantified, bats present an excellent model system to investigate intraspecific variation in environmental cue sampling.

Migratory bats respond to artificial green light with positive phototaxis.

Artificial light at night is spreading worldwide at unprecedented rates, exposing strictly nocturnal animals such as bats to a novel anthropogenic stressor. Previous studies about the effect of artificial light on bats focused almost exclusively on non-migratory species, yet migratory animals such as birds are known to be largely affected by light pollution. Thus, we conducted a field experiment to evaluate if bat migration is affected by artificial light at night.