Movement Ecology and Conservation of the Migratory Bats Lasiurus cinereus and Lasionycteris noctivagans
Date
2015-09-15
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Abstract
Little is known about bat migration, but recently, fatalities of migratory bats at wind energy facilities across North America have offered the opportunity to gain insight into migratory-bat behaviour. Using a combination of stable-isotope and genetic analyses, I studied patterns of movement and relatedness of two species of migratory tree-roosting bats frequently killed by wind turbines: hoary bats (Lasiurus cinereus) and silver-haired bats (Lasionycteris noctivagans). Using stable isotopes of nitrogen (δ15N), carbon (δ13C), and hydrogen (δ2H) of the fur of bat carcasses collected at a wind energy facility in south-western Alberta, I determined that the bats killed were migratory and originated from latitudes 100s-1000’s of kilometers to the north, with silver-haired bat originating from further north than hoary bats. The relationships between stable isotopes and arrival date suggests that the timing of migration may be governed by local habitat cues rather than latitudinal cues. I used a highly polymorphic portion (HVII) of the mitochondrial DNA control region and developed multilocus microsatellite markers to investigate the population genetics of hoary bats and silver-haired bats recovered at wind energy facilities in three Canadian provinces. Pairwise Fst values suggest subtle population-genetic structure among sites in both species, but greater structure in silver-haired bats. Two different Bayesian clustering analyses, STRUCTURE and TESS, suggested that there are at least two genetic clusters of hoary bats and six genetic clusters of silver-haired bats across the three sites. Lastly, I used microsatellite markers to examine whether bats learn migratory routes and behaviours from other closely related individuals. I tested whether the time between when individual bats were killed at a wind energy facility was influenced by their degree of relatedness and found that bats do not appear to be learning migratory routes or behaviours from closely related individuals. This suggests that bats may rely on endogenous genetic programs for migration and that migration may be a heritable trait.
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Ecology
Citation
Baerwald, E. (2015). Movement Ecology and Conservation of the Migratory Bats Lasiurus cinereus and Lasionycteris noctivagans (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/27018