Roads and bats: a meta‐analysis and review of the evidence on vehicle collisions and barrier effects

Abstract

Roads are a potential threat to bat conservation. In addition to the direct risk of collision of bats with vehicles, roads could pose a threat to bat populations as a result of habitat loss, degradation and fragmentation, and could act as barriers to movements of bats between habitats.

We performed a systematic review of the literature and conducted meta‐analyses to assess the threat posed by roads to bats as a result of 1) collisions between bats and vehicles and 2) roads acting as barriers to movements of bats.

Based on collated records of 1207 bat road casualties in Europe, we found that low‐flying species are more prone to collisions than high‐flying species, and that juveniles are more vulnerable to collisions than adults. In addition, meta‐analysis identified a significant bias towards male casualties. Casualties included rare species such as Barbastella barbastellus and geographically restricted species such as Rhinolophus species.

The bias towards male casualties could be indicative of greater natal philopatry or lower dispersal among females, or of sexual segregation in habitats of varying quality, i.e. females may occupy better quality habitats than males, and road density may be lower in better quality habitats.

Whether or not roads act as barriers to the movement of bats depends on a complex interplay of habitat and species‐specific behaviour. For example, the presence of favourable habitat for bats – notably woodland – was found in th...

Source: Mammal Review - May 28, 2016 Category: Zoology Authors: Amy Grace Fensome, Fiona Mathews Tags: Review Source Type: research