Bottomland forests in the eastern United States are used by bat populations for both roosting and foraging. To quantify habitat characteristics important to bat presence in the Mississippi River alluvial valley, we measured forest habitat variables and related them to bat captures obtained in six management areas located near Jonesboro, Arkansas. Forest measurements included species composition, stem count, canopy height, basal area, canopy coverage and percent vegetative ground coverage for trees found in 120 0.03-ha circular plots from 12 bat capture sites. Principal component analysis was conducted on habitat data, and compared to bat captures by use of multiple regression analysis. Interaction effects due to the nested structure of the sampling design were measured with mixed linear models. We found significant correlations between total bat captures, composed of all captures for eight species and forests of high stem count and vegetative ground cover. Mixed model analysis revealed that Rafinesque's big-eared bats (Corynorhinus rafinesquii) were more likely to be captured at dry corridor sites than corridors over water, where as regression analysis revealed a significant (P  =  0.016) relationship between southeastern myotis and percent oaks.