Departamento de Biologia Animal and Centro de Biologia Ambiental, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal.
PLoS One. 2011 Apr 25;6(4):e19227. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0019227.
Many bats are threatened by habitat loss, but opportunities to manage their habitats are now increasing. Success of management depends greatly on the capacity to determine where and how interventions should take place, so models predicting how animals use landscapes are important to plan them. Bats are quite distinctive in the way they use space for foraging because (i) most are colonial central-place foragers and (ii) exploit scattered and distant resources, although this increases flying costs. To evaluate how important distances to resources are in modelling foraging bat habitat suitability, we radio-tracked two cave-dwelling species of conservation concern (Rhinolophus mehelyi and Miniopterus schreibersii) in a Mediterranean landscape. Habitat and distance variables were evaluated using logistic regression modelling. Distance variables greatly increased the performance of models, and distance to roost and to drinking water could alone explain 86 and 73% of the use of space by M. schreibersii and R. mehelyi, respectively. Land-cover and soil productivity also provided a significant contribution to the final models. Habitat suitability maps generated by models with and without distance variables differed substantially, confirming the shortcomings of maps generated without distance variables. Indeed, areas shown as highly suitable in maps generated without distance variables proved poorly suitable when distance variables were also considered. We concluded that distances to resources are determinant in the way bats forage across the landscape, and that using distance variables substantially improves the accuracy of suitability maps generated with spatially explicit models. Consequently, modelling with these variables is important to guide habitat management in bats and similarly mobile animals, particularly if they are central-place foragers or depend on spatially scarce resources.
许多蝙蝠受到栖息地丧失的威胁，但现在管理它们栖息地的机会正在增加。管理的成功在很大程度上取决于确定干预措施应该在何处和如何进行的能力，因此预测动物如何利用景观的模型对于规划它们非常重要。蝙蝠在觅食时使用空间的方式非常独特，因为 (i) 大多数是聚居地的中央觅食者，以及 (ii) 利用分散和遥远的资源，尽管这会增加飞行成本。为了评估在建模觅食蝙蝠栖息地适宜性时距离资源的重要性，我们在一个地中海景观中对两种洞穴栖息的受保护物种（Rhinolophus mehelyi 和 Miniopterus schreibersii）进行了无线电追踪。使用逻辑回归模型评估了栖息地和距离变量。距离变量极大地提高了模型的性能，到栖息地和饮用水的距离变量单独可以解释 M. schreibersii 和 R. mehelyi 分别 86%和 73%的空间利用。土地覆盖和土壤生产力也为最终模型提供了重要贡献。带有和不带有距离变量的模型生成的栖息地适宜性图有很大差异，证实了没有距离变量生成的地图的缺点。事实上，在没有距离变量的地图中显示为高度适宜的区域，在考虑距离变量时证明是不适宜的。我们得出的结论是，距离资源是蝙蝠在景观中觅食的决定性因素，使用距离变量可以大大提高具有空间显式模型生成的适宜性地图的准确性。因此，使用这些变量进行建模对于指导蝙蝠和类似的移动动物的栖息地管理很重要，特别是如果它们是聚居地觅食者或依赖空间稀缺的资源。
