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8 March 2020 Survival and persistence of tricolored bats hibernating in Arkansas mines
Roger W. Perry, Phillip N. Jordan
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Abstract

White-nose syndrome (WNS) has caused large declines in bat populations across eastern North America, making information on demographics of affected species critical to determining their risk for extinction. We used Cormack–Jolly–Seber models to estimate apparent survival rates of hibernating tricolored bats (Perimyotis subflavus) for 5 years in four small abandoned mines in the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas, located within the WNS endemic area of the United States. Populations in individual mines varied greatly in survival rates, with one mine displaying annual survival rates as high as 0.706 and another as low as 0.101. Differences in survival among bats in different mines could not definitively be attributed to WNS, but may have varied based on a combination of WNS, disturbance, mine climate, and other unknown factors. Further, some hibernacula may have served as temporary winter shelter for young transient males. Sites housing small colonies of hibernating bats may result in high survival rates despite WNS, and protecting these smaller sites may be important for overall species perseverance.

Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of American Society of Mammalogists 2020. This work is written by (a) US Government employee(s) and is in the public domain in the US.
Roger W. Perry and Phillip N. Jordan "Survival and persistence of tricolored bats hibernating in Arkansas mines," Journal of Mammalogy 101(2), 535-543, (8 March 2020). https://doi.org/10.1093/jmammal/gyaa016
Received: 13 August 2019; Accepted: 1 February 2020; Published: 8 March 2020
KEYWORDS
caves
disturbance
fat stores
mass
Perimyotis subflavus
white-nose syndrome
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