Haelewaters Danny, Hughes Morgan, Barão-Nóbrega José António Lemos, Slater Kathy, Martin Thomas Edward
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado, United States of America.
Faculty of Science, University of South Bohemia, České Budějovice, Czech Republic.
PLoS One. 2024 Dec 12;19(12):e0311553. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0311553. eCollection 2024.
Standardized monitoring strategies are often used to study spatial and temporal ecological patterns and trends. Such approaches are applied for many study taxa, including bats (Mammalia, Chiroptera). However, local characteristics of individual field sites, including species assemblages, terrain, climatic factors, and presence or lack of landscape features, may affect the efficacy of these standardized surveys. In this paper, we completed mist-netting surveys for bats in two widely separated field sites, Calakmul Biosphere Reserve (CBR), a Mexican lowland tropical forest, and Krka National Park (KNP), a Mediterranean dry scrub forest in Croatia. Standardized surveys were conducted along predefined transects for six hours. We also completed targeted surveys in KNP that focused on the key bat activity period (the first two to three hours after sunset), with nets being deployed at sites of known or assumed value to bats (independent of predefined transects). We analyzed how survey success differed in standardized surveys between CBR and KNP and between standardized and targeted surveys in KNP. Survey success was measured through three parameters: capture rate = the number of individual bats captured per net hour, inventory rate = the number of unique bat species recorded per net hour, and inventory efficacy = the percentage of known species assemblage recorded per net hour across all surveys. Results for all three parameters indicate that standardized surveys in CBR were vastly more effective than those in KNP (e.g., mist-netting in CBR detected 69.8% of the species assemblage, compared to just 8.3% in KNP), and it was only by employing targeted mist-netting in KNP that meaningful capture rates could be achieved. This study contributes further evidence to discussions around how and when standardized survey methods should be employed, and the alternative approaches that can be taken in ecosystems where generally effective methods underperform.
标准化监测策略常用于研究空间和时间上的生态模式及趋势。此类方法适用于许多研究类群，包括蝙蝠（哺乳纲，翼手目）。然而，各个野外地点的局部特征，包括物种组合、地形、气候因素以及景观特征的有无，可能会影响这些标准化调查的效果。在本文中，我们在两个相距甚远的野外地点进行了蝙蝠雾网捕捉调查，一个是墨西哥低地热带森林的卡拉科姆尔生物圈保护区（CBR），另一个是克罗地亚地中海干燥灌丛森林的克尔卡国家公园（KNP）。沿着预先定义的样带进行了六个小时的标准化调查。我们还在KNP完成了针对性调查，重点关注蝙蝠的关键活动期（日落后的头两到三个小时），在已知或假定对蝙蝠有价值的地点（独立于预先定义的样带）设置网。我们分析了CBR和KNP之间标准化调查以及KNP中标准化调查和针对性调查的调查成功率差异。通过三个参数衡量调查成功率：捕获率 = 每网小时捕获的蝙蝠个体数量，清查率 = 每网小时记录的独特蝙蝠物种数量，清查效率 = 在所有调查中每网小时记录的已知物种组合的百分比。所有三个参数的结果表明，CBR的标准化调查比KNP的有效得多（例如，CBR的雾网捕捉检测到69.8%的物种组合，而KNP仅为8.3%），只有在KNP采用针对性雾网捕捉才能实现有意义的捕获率。这项研究为关于如何以及何时采用标准化调查方法以及在一般有效方法表现不佳的生态系统中可以采用的替代方法的讨论提供了进一步的证据。
