Wind energy development can lead to guild‐specific habitat loss in boreal forest bats

IF 1.7 3区生物学 Q3 ECOLOGY

Wildlife Biology Pub Date : 2024-01-04 DOI:10.1002/wlb3.01168

Reed April McKay, S. E. Johns, R. Bischof, Fiona Matthews, Jeroen van der Kooij, N. Yoh, K. Eldegard

{"title":"Wind energy development can lead to guild‐specific habitat loss in boreal forest bats","authors":"Reed April McKay, S. E. Johns, R. Bischof, Fiona Matthews, Jeroen van der Kooij, N. Yoh, K. Eldegard","doi":"10.1002/wlb3.01168","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Forest management rarely considers protecting bats in Fennoscandian regions although all species rely on forest habitat at some point in their annual cycle. This issue is especially evident as wind parks have increasingly been developed inside Fennoscandian forests, against the advice of international bat conservation guidelines. In this study, we aimed to describe and explain bat community dynamics at a Norwegian wind park located in a boreal forest, especially to understand potential avoidance or attraction effects. The bat community was sampled acoustically and described using foraging guilds (short, medium, and long‐range echolocators; SRE, MRE, LRE) as well as behavior (commuting, feeding and social calls). Sampling was undertaken at two locations per turbine: 1) the turbine pad and 2) a paired natural habitat at ground level, as well as from a meteorological tower. We used a recently developed method for camera trapping nocturnal flying insects synchronously with bat acoustic activity. Our results reveal trends in feeding and general bat activity across foraging guilds in relation to insect availability, habitat type, wind, temperature, and seasonality. We show how seasonal patterns in behavior across guilds were affected by habitat type, temperature, and wind. We found that SRE commuting and especially feeding activity was highest in natural habitats, whereas LRE overall activity at habitats more season dependent. We found that nocturnal insect availability was positively correlated with total bat feeding activity throughout the night. Our results provide evidence for both direct and indirect risks to bat communities by wind parks: SRE bat habitat is lost to wind energy infrastructure and LRE bat may have an increased risk of fatality. Our findings provide important insights on seasonal and spatial variability in bat activity, which can inform standardizing monitoring of bats acoustically in boreal forests, at wind parks, and in combination with non‐invasive insect monitoring.","PeriodicalId":54405,"journal":{"name":"Wildlife Biology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.7000,"publicationDate":"2024-01-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Wildlife Biology","FirstCategoryId":"99","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1002/wlb3.01168","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"ECOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Forest management rarely considers protecting bats in Fennoscandian regions although all species rely on forest habitat at some point in their annual cycle. This issue is especially evident as wind parks have increasingly been developed inside Fennoscandian forests, against the advice of international bat conservation guidelines. In this study, we aimed to describe and explain bat community dynamics at a Norwegian wind park located in a boreal forest, especially to understand potential avoidance or attraction effects. The bat community was sampled acoustically and described using foraging guilds (short, medium, and long‐range echolocators; SRE, MRE, LRE) as well as behavior (commuting, feeding and social calls). Sampling was undertaken at two locations per turbine: 1) the turbine pad and 2) a paired natural habitat at ground level, as well as from a meteorological tower. We used a recently developed method for camera trapping nocturnal flying insects synchronously with bat acoustic activity. Our results reveal trends in feeding and general bat activity across foraging guilds in relation to insect availability, habitat type, wind, temperature, and seasonality. We show how seasonal patterns in behavior across guilds were affected by habitat type, temperature, and wind. We found that SRE commuting and especially feeding activity was highest in natural habitats, whereas LRE overall activity at habitats more season dependent. We found that nocturnal insect availability was positively correlated with total bat feeding activity throughout the night. Our results provide evidence for both direct and indirect risks to bat communities by wind parks: SRE bat habitat is lost to wind energy infrastructure and LRE bat may have an increased risk of fatality. Our findings provide important insights on seasonal and spatial variability in bat activity, which can inform standardizing monitoring of bats acoustically in boreal forests, at wind parks, and in combination with non‐invasive insect monitoring.

查看原文本刊更多论文

风能开发会导致北方森林蝙蝠的特定栖息地丧失

森林管理部门很少考虑保护芬诺斯坎迪亚地区的蝙蝠，尽管所有物种在其年周期的某个阶段都依赖森林栖息地。随着越来越多的风力发电厂在芬诺斯坎地区的森林中开发，这一问题变得尤为明显，而这却违背了国际蝙蝠保护指南的建议。在这项研究中，我们旨在描述和解释位于北方森林中的挪威风力发电厂的蝙蝠群落动态，尤其是了解潜在的回避或吸引效应。我们对蝙蝠群落进行了声学采样，并使用觅食类别（短程、中程和长程回声定位器；SRE、MRE、LRE）以及行为（通勤、觅食和社交性鸣叫）对其进行了描述。每个涡轮机在两个地点取样：1）涡轮机台；2）地面上的自然栖息地，以及气象塔。我们使用了最近开发的一种方法，在蝙蝠声学活动的同时用照相机诱捕夜间飞虫。我们的研究结果揭示了不同觅食行会的觅食和一般蝙蝠活动趋势与昆虫可用性、栖息地类型、风力、温度和季节性的关系。我们展示了各行业行为的季节性模式是如何受到栖息地类型、温度和风的影响的。我们发现，在自然栖息地，SRE的通勤活动，尤其是觅食活动最为频繁，而LRE在栖息地的总体活动更依赖于季节。我们发现，夜间昆虫的可获得性与蝙蝠整夜的总觅食活动呈正相关。我们的研究结果为风电场对蝙蝠群落造成的直接和间接风险提供了证据：风能基础设施丧失了蝙蝠的SRE栖息地，而LRE蝙蝠的死亡风险可能会增加。我们的研究结果为了解蝙蝠活动的季节和空间变异性提供了重要依据，可为在北方森林、风力发电厂以及结合非侵入性昆虫监测对蝙蝠进行声学标准化监测提供信息。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

Wildlife Biology 生物-动物学

CiteScore

4.30

自引率

0.00%

发文量

审稿时长

>12 weeks

期刊介绍： WILDLIFE BIOLOGY is a high-quality scientific forum directing concise and up-to-date information to scientists, administrators, wildlife managers and conservationists. The journal encourages and welcomes original papers, short communications and reviews written in English from throughout the world. The journal accepts theoretical, empirical, and practical articles of high standard from all areas of wildlife science with the primary task of creating the scientific basis for the enhancement of wildlife management practices. Our concept of ''wildlife'' mainly includes mammal and bird species, but studies on other species or phenomena relevant to wildlife management are also of great interest. We adopt a broad concept of wildlife management, including all structures and actions with the purpose of conservation, sustainable use, and/or control of wildlife and its habitats, in order to safeguard sustainable relationships between wildlife and other human interests.