Long term trends of hibernating bats in North-Western Italy
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Long term trends of hibernating bats in North-Western Italy Roberto Toffoli 1
&
Mara Calvini 1
Received: 3 February 2020 / Accepted: 25 August 2020 # Institute of Zoology, Slovak Academy of Sciences 2020
Abstract Several species of bats have faced strong population declines in Europe during the last century. However, an increase in some bat populations has been recently found in some parts of western Europe. We monitored wintering bats in the underground caves of north-western Italy (Piedmont, Valle d’Aosta and Liguria regions), with the aim of estimating long-term population variations. Over 28 years (from 1992 to 2019), 52 hibernation sites were monitored where 14 species of bats were present. Altogether, 97% of individuals belonged to Rhinolophus euryale, Rhinolophus ferrumequinum, Rhinolophus hipposideros, Barbastella barbastellus, Myotis emarginatus, and to the large Myotis group (Myotis myotis/blythii). We found a positive population trend for these six most common species with an average annual increase ranging between 3.5% (R. ferrumequinum) and 15.0% (B. barbastellus), which is in congruence with what has occurred in central and western Europe in the last 20 years. The species R. hipposideros showed a significant increase during the first 10 years, followed by a stable trend thereafter. Keywords Chiroptera . Wintering . Annual monitoring . Population recovery . TRIM software
Introduction Several temperate bat species suffered rapid population declines in western and central Europe in the middle of the twentieth century (Racey and Stebbings 1972; Ransome 1989; Kokurewicz 1990; Weinreich and Oude Voshaar 1992; Hutson et al. 2001; Temple and Terry 2007). Some species even became locally extinct (Bontadina et al. 2000; Haysom et al. 2010; Thissen et al. 2009). This decrease also affected other taxa, such as farmland birds, raptors, and amphibians (Newton 1979; Halliday 1993; Krebs et al. 1999). For bats, declines were attributed to various factors, including widespread agricultural intensification and changes in landscape structure, disturbance and destruction of hibernacula and summer roost sites, degradation and fragmentation of feeding sites, pesticide use for remedial timber treatment and agriculture, declines in invertebrate prey, disturbances by Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.2478/s11756-020-00584-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Roberto Toffoli [email protected] 1
Chirosphera Association for the study and protection of bats and the environment, Via Tetti Barbiere 11, 10128 Santena, TO, Italy
biologists and caving enthusiasts, deliberate killing, and water pollution (Jefferies 1972; Brosset et al. 1985; Leeuwangh and Voûte 1985; Mitchell-Jones et al. 1989; Shore et al. 1990; Stebbings and Griffith 1986; Hutson et al. 2001; Wickramasinghe et al. 2003). The decline in bat populations also affected Italy. Some species became locally extinct (e.g. Rhinolophus blasii Peters, 1867), whi
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