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Nest boxes do not cause a shift in bat community composition in an urbanised landscape

Nest boxes are often used to provide supplementary roosts for cavity-dependent wildlife, but little is known about if they influence faunal community composition. Long-term monitoring of bat boxes in south-eastern Australia indicated that their use was dominated by one generalist species (Chalinolob...

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Autores principales: Griffiths, Stephen R., Lumsden, Linda F., Robert, Kylie A., Lentini, Pia E.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7148353/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32277114
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-63003-w
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author Griffiths, Stephen R.
Lumsden, Linda F.
Robert, Kylie A.
Lentini, Pia E.
author_facet Griffiths, Stephen R.
Lumsden, Linda F.
Robert, Kylie A.
Lentini, Pia E.
author_sort Griffiths, Stephen R.
collection PubMed
description Nest boxes are often used to provide supplementary roosts for cavity-dependent wildlife, but little is known about if they influence faunal community composition. Long-term monitoring of bat boxes in south-eastern Australia indicated that their use was dominated by one generalist species (Chalinolobus gouldii), causing concern that installing bat boxes could cause a shift toward less diverse bat communities. To test this, we conducted a large-scale before-after control-impact experiment at 18 sites, over five years. Sites were either: (1) those with existing bat boxes, (2) those where boxes were added during the study, or (3) controls without boxes. We used echolocation call data from 9035 bat detector nights to compare community composition, diversity, and species’ relative activity between the sites. Chalinolobus gouldii continued to dominate the use of existing boxes, but we found little difference in community composition between sites based on the presence, absence, or addition of boxes. Our study is the first to explore the influence installing artificial hollows has on localized faunal assemblages over spatio-temporal scales relevant to management. We conclude that there is cause for optimism that bat boxes might not have perverse outcomes on local community composition in the short- to medium-term, as we had feared.
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spelling pubmed-71483532020-04-15 Nest boxes do not cause a shift in bat community composition in an urbanised landscape Griffiths, Stephen R. Lumsden, Linda F. Robert, Kylie A. Lentini, Pia E. Sci Rep Article Nest boxes are often used to provide supplementary roosts for cavity-dependent wildlife, but little is known about if they influence faunal community composition. Long-term monitoring of bat boxes in south-eastern Australia indicated that their use was dominated by one generalist species (Chalinolobus gouldii), causing concern that installing bat boxes could cause a shift toward less diverse bat communities. To test this, we conducted a large-scale before-after control-impact experiment at 18 sites, over five years. Sites were either: (1) those with existing bat boxes, (2) those where boxes were added during the study, or (3) controls without boxes. We used echolocation call data from 9035 bat detector nights to compare community composition, diversity, and species’ relative activity between the sites. Chalinolobus gouldii continued to dominate the use of existing boxes, but we found little difference in community composition between sites based on the presence, absence, or addition of boxes. Our study is the first to explore the influence installing artificial hollows has on localized faunal assemblages over spatio-temporal scales relevant to management. We conclude that there is cause for optimism that bat boxes might not have perverse outcomes on local community composition in the short- to medium-term, as we had feared. Nature Publishing Group UK 2020-04-10 /pmc/articles/PMC7148353/ /pubmed/32277114 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-63003-w Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Griffiths, Stephen R.
Lumsden, Linda F.
Robert, Kylie A.
Lentini, Pia E.
Nest boxes do not cause a shift in bat community composition in an urbanised landscape
title Nest boxes do not cause a shift in bat community composition in an urbanised landscape
title_full Nest boxes do not cause a shift in bat community composition in an urbanised landscape
title_fullStr Nest boxes do not cause a shift in bat community composition in an urbanised landscape
title_full_unstemmed Nest boxes do not cause a shift in bat community composition in an urbanised landscape
title_short Nest boxes do not cause a shift in bat community composition in an urbanised landscape
title_sort nest boxes do not cause a shift in bat community composition in an urbanised landscape
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7148353/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32277114
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-63003-w
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