Wieringa Jamin G, Carstens Bryan C, Gibbs H Lisle
Department of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA.
Ohio Biodiversity Conservation Partnership, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA.
PeerJ. 2021 Apr 16;9:e11177. doi: 10.7717/peerj.11177. eCollection 2021.
Understanding seasonal variation in the distribution and movement patterns of migratory species is essential to monitoring and conservation efforts. While there are many species of migratory bats in North America, little is known about their seasonal movements. In terms of conservation, this is important because the bat fatalities from wind energy turbines are significant and may fluctuate seasonally. Here we describe seasonally resolved distributions for the three species that are most impacted by wind farms ( (eastern red bat), (hoary bat) and (silver-haired bat)) and use these distributions to infer their most likely migratory pathways. To accomplish this, we collected 2,880 occurrence points from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility over five decades in North America to model species distributions on a seasonal basis and used an ensemble approach for modeling distributions. This dataset included 1,129 data points for , 917 for and 834 for . The results suggest that all three species exhibit variation in distributions from north to south depending on season, with each species showing potential migratory pathways during the fall migration that follow linear features. Finally, we describe proposed migratory pathways for these three species that can be used to identify stop-over sites, assess small-scale migration and highlight areas that should be prioritized for actions to reduce the effects of wind farm mortality.
了解迁徙物种分布和移动模式的季节性变化对于监测和保护工作至关重要。虽然北美有许多迁徙蝙蝠物种，但对它们的季节性移动了解甚少。在保护方面，这很重要，因为风力涡轮机造成的蝙蝠死亡数量可观，且可能随季节波动。在这里，我们描述了受风力发电场影响最大的三种物种（东部红蝙蝠、霜蝠和银毛蝙蝠）的季节性分布，并利用这些分布来推断它们最可能的迁徙路径。为了实现这一目标，我们在北美五十年间从全球生物多样性信息设施收集了2880个出现点，以便按季节对物种分布进行建模，并使用综合方法进行分布建模。该数据集包括1129个东部红蝙蝠的数据点、917个霜蝠的数据点和834个银毛蝙蝠的数据点。结果表明，这三种物种的分布都随季节呈现出从北到南的变化，每种物种在秋季迁徙期间都显示出沿着线性特征的潜在迁徙路径。最后，我们描述了这三种物种的拟议迁徙路径，可用于识别中途停留地点、评估小规模迁徙，并突出应优先采取行动以减少风力发电场死亡率影响的区域。
