Home range and habitat selection of the Indiana bat in an agricultural landscape

Agricultural intensification has led to widespread declines in wildlife biodiversity across many taxa. North American bats provide valuable services for agriculture yet basic ecological understanding of how bats use habitat in intensely agricultural areas is lacking. We examined the movements and resource selection of the federally endangered Indiana bat (Myotis sodalis) in a highly agricultural landscape in central Ohio, USA. We recorded nocturnal movements of 36 Indiana bats during the summers of 2009 and 2010; mean (± SD) fixed-kernel home range area was 212.0 ± 132.4 ha. We examined second- and third-order habitat selection and found that bats selected all habitat types more strongly than cropland at all analysis scales. Woodland was selected more strongly than any other habitat with the exception of open water. However, although bats heavily used a wooded stream corridor, movement was not restricted by large expanses of cropland and bats traversed open, non-forested areas > 1 km across to reach small, isolated, wooded patches. The limits and to what extent Indiana bats can persist using small, isolated habitat patches are unknown, but our data support continued emphasis on conservation of riparian habitats and wooded patches within agricultural landscapes.