Landels-Hill Big Creek Reserve

17 Nov, 06 AM - 18 Nov, 02 AM

The hoary bat Lasiurus cinereus is a migratory tree-roosting bat that has been experiencing high rates of mortality at wind energy development sites during the fall migration. Social and behavioral factors may contribute to the susceptibility of hoary bats to turbines and temporal patterns in mortality, and understanding these factors may be vital to mitigating bat mortality at wind energy installations. I will test responses of hoary bats to social call broadcasting in order to gain insight into the role these calls may play in social, and particularly, mating behavior. Social calls will be broadcast from an ultrasonic speaker system (Binary Acoustic Technology AT800) while bats potentially responding to broadcasts will be videotaped with infrared cameras and captured using mist nets. I will alternate broadcasting of social calls with silence to make within-night comparisons of capture rates. Fieldwork will be conducted at various locations where hoary bats occur seasonally including New Mexico, the Pacific Northwest, and California. In addition to assessing possible causes of hoary bat susceptibility to wind turbines, this effort expands upon previous work to test the effectiveness of broadcasting hoary bat social calls as a deterrent to bat activity around wind turbines, or alternatively as a lure to increase sampling efficiency for research on hoary bats.

Visit #23371 @Landels-Hill Big Creek Reserve

Approved

Under Project # 22758 | Research

The Behavioral Function of Social Calls in the Migratory Hoary Bat Lasiurus cinereus

graduate_student - Humboldt State University (CSU)

Reservation Members(s)

Gabriel Reyes Nov 17 - 18, 2010 (2 days)
Group of 5 Other Nov 17 - 18, 2010 (2 days)
Gabriel Reyes Nov 17 - 18, 2010 (2 days)

Reserve Resources(s) | Create Invoice

Whale Point Researcher Cabin 7 Nov 17 - 18, 2010