Bats Not Bothered by Forest Fires?

[cavergirl]

interesting article, The findings suggest that bats are resilient to high-severity fire, and some species may even benefit from the effects of fire on the landscape.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 221141.htm

[wyandottecaver]

No surprise really that mosaic landscapes help bats, thats been shown before. Also pretty time and species dependent. Red bats tend to hibernate in the leaf litter and a winter or early spring fire is bad news for them. Overall my cynical self says this was a PR piece intended to get people on the bandwagon for controlled fire in the West, rather than anything especially novel in bat research. Of course it does highlight the trend towards relying on acoustic sensors to tell you what is happening...which is a whole different debate :)

[driggs]

Red bats tend to hibernate in the leaf litter and a winter or early spring fire is bad news for them.

There was an interesting presentation on prescribed burns at this year's Southeast Bat Diversity Network conference by R. W. Perry of the USDA Forest Service, Hot Springs AR (I can't find a copy online). They placed temperature probes and "bats" made of a known-melting-point wax underneath the leaf litter during winter prescribed burns. 93% of the burns resulted in conditions that they assume would be fatal to Red Bats and Hoary Bats, defined as > 145 degrees for 60 seconds. But a few sites retained temperatures where the roosting bats could have survived, and they recovered the wax "bats" in near perfect condition.

This is certainly not rationale for assuming that prescribed burns don't significantly impact tree bats, but it was cool to see that in some cases, bats who weren't able to escape in time may survive. Apparently it is not uncommon to observe Reds coming out of torpor and flying out of the leaf litter as fire approaches.

[jodiety11]

Red bats tend to hibernate in the leaf litter and a winter or early spring fire is bad news for them.

There was an interesting presentation on prescribed burns at this year's Southeast Bat Diversity Network conference by R. W. Perry of the USDA Forest Service, Hot Springs AR (I can't find a copy online). They placed temperature probes and "bats" made of a known-melting-point wax underneath the leaf litter during winter prescribed burns. 93% of the burns resulted in conditions that they assume would be fatal to Red Bats and Hoary Bats, defined as > 145 degrees for 60 seconds. But a few sites retained temperatures where the roosting bats could have survived, and they recovered the wax "bats" in near perfect condition.

This is certainly not rationale for assuming that prescribed burns don't significantly impact tree bats, but it was cool to see that in some cases, bats who weren't able to escape in time may survive. Apparently it is not uncommon to observe Reds coming out of torpor and flying out of the leaf litter as fire approaches.

Interesting. Thanks.