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ABSTRACT. Dave's Pond, 1 1/4 miles NE of Sandcut in northeastern Vigo County, Indiana, is compared to 'Sand Hill', now part of Deming Park on the eastern edge of Terre [...]

ABSTRACT. This study identified insecticides that were detected in bats obtained from Indiana's Lake Michigan watershed. Forty bats collected from Lake, Porter and LaPorte Counties, Indiana, were analyzed for pyrethroid, [...]

ABSTRACT. Presented here are the results of a biodiversity survey held on July 16-18, 2011 at the Goose Pond Fish and Wildlife Area, Indiana Department of Natural Resources, in Greene [...]

ABSTRACT. Mammals at the Indianapolis International Airport conservation properties were studied from 2008 until 2010 in association with on-going studies of the bat community at the site. Results from a [...]

ABSTRACT. Mammals at Goose Pond Fish and Wildlife Area, just south of Linton, in Greene County, Indiana, were studied in July, 2010 in association with a general biodiversity survey there. [...]

ABSTRACT--Twelve central Tennessee caves were sampled in the Nashville Basin and Highland Rim subsections of the Interior Low Plateaus physiographic province. Emphasis was placed on sampling caves inhabited by the [...]

We collected data on the diet of eight species of insectivorous bats (Chiroptera, Vespertilionidae): big brown bats (Eptesicusfuscus), red bats (Lasiurus borealis), evening bats (Nycticeius humeralis), northern myotis (Myotis septentrionalis), little brown myotis (M. lucifugus), Indiana myotis (M. sodalis), southeastern myotis (M. austroriparius) and eastern pipistrelles (Perimyotis subflavus). Bats were mist netted during the summers of 1999 and 2000 at 41 forest sites throughout southern Illinois. We analyzed prey remains in fecal pellets of 305 individuals to assess diet similarity among species and relationships between bat body mass and prey diversity and hardness. Larger species included big brown bats and evening bats that are primarily hard-bodied beetles (Coleoptera). These bats had the greatest dietary similarity index value compared with the other chiropterans in the community, and the highest hardness indices of prey consumed. Red bats, second only to E. fuscus in mean body mass, are more soft bodied moths (Lepidoptera) and leaf hoppers (Homoptera) than beetles. Smaller bats, including three species of Myotis, consumed the greatest diversity of prey and were generally grouped together in diet similarity indices. Little brown myotis, northern myotis and Indiana myotis fed primarily on moths and beetles. Northern myofis and little brown myotis also fed extensively on spiders, suggesting significant gleaning behavior. Unlike other Myotis, the southeastern myotis had a low dietary diversity index and fed primarily on caddisflies (Trichoptera), as did eastern pipistrelles. Pipistrelles and myotines had the lowest hardness indices of prey consumed. Bats in southern Illinois exhibited landscape level (macroscale) feeding patterns consistent with the predicted relationship between body size and hardness of prey consumed, while at the local, site-specific level (microscale) they foraged with extensive overlap among similar-sized species, especially most Myotis. Regional differences in diets were minimal within the same assemblage of bat species in southern Indiana., INTRODUCTION Close relationships exist between diets of bats and factors such as foraging habitats used, wing morphology, tooth structure, jaw musculature and resultant bite force, characteristics of echolocation calls and [...]

ABSTRACT. Long-term roosting ecology of the federally-endangered Indiana myotis (Myotis sodalis), in a rapidly-developing area immediately southwest of the Indianapolis International Airport was examined. A dead shagbark hickory, Carya ovata, [...]

We examined the diet of big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus) during an emergence of 17-y cicadas (Magicicada spp.) in May and Jun, of 2004 in Indiana. We collected guano from a maternity colony of big brown bats and compared the diet during the cicada emergence to the diet during the same period of a non-cicada year. In contrast to previous studies, homopterans (predominantly 17-y cicadas) were a common food item (22.9-23.6% volume) during the peak of cicada abundance. Scarabaeidae (13.8-48.5%), Carabidae (7.3-36.9%) and hemipterans (19.4-29.3%) were also common prey items during the cicada emergence. Although periodical cicadas constituted a fair amount of the diet during the emergence, the dietary diversity of big brown bats during the emergence was similar to that of non-cicada years. Our results demonstrate that big brown bats forage on 17-y cicadas during a cicada emergence. However, despite the superabundance of cicadas, big brown bats do not specialize on cicadas to the relative exclusion of other prey types., INTRODUCTION Resource pulses (i.e., episodic periods of superabundance), such as the emergence of 17-y cicadas (hereafter termed cicada), have recently gained attention as a factor that can have widespread effects [...]

ABSTRACT. Sixty-five species of fish are known from the lower Prairie Creek drainage of Vigo County, Indiana; 51 of them had been reported prior to the present study. During the [...]

ABSTRACT. We examined the diet of nine species of mammals in Vigo and Clay Co. Indiana during an emergence of 17-year cicadas (Cicadidae; Magicicada spp.) in May and June of [...]

ABSTRACT. A total of 79 small mammals was trapped at Naval Support Activity Crane, Martin County, Indiana, including 23 short-tailed shrews (Blarina brevicauda), 21 least shrews (Cryptotis parva), 11 prairie [...]

ABSTRACT. We studied the number of hibernating eastern pipistrelles, Perimyotis subflavus, in Copperhead 'Cave,' an abandoned mine in Vermillion County, Indiana, just across the fiver from Montezuma, Parke County. The [...]

ABSTRACT. Over recent decades, numerous species of bats have been declining, but the causes are not well understood. One of the causes often mentioned is that of environmental toxicants. Feeding [...]

ABSTRACT. The most abundant terrestrial small mammals in the Wabash River bottomlands in Vigo County, Indiana, in the early 1960's were the house mouse, the white-footed mouse, the prairie deer [...]

ABSTRACT. A short-term (approximately three hours) BioBlitz (rapid assessment of the species living in a particular area at one time) was conducted in the vicinity of Otter Creek, a tributary [...]

I am very pleased to have been asked by Jim Berry to write an article in this biographical series about Marion T. Jackson. I have known Marion since August 1964 [...]

ABSTRACT. Indiana myotis (Myotis sodalis) caught on Newport Chemical Depot, Vermillion County, Indiana used four primary and two alternate roosts, all within 6.3 km of one another, supporting the hypothesis [...]

ABSTRACT. Eight species of bats were found at Camp Atterbury, a military training facility in Bartholomew, Brown, and Johnson counties, Indiana. Listed in approximate order of decreasing abundance they are [...]

ABSTRACT. Forty-one of the 57 species of mammals know to occur in Indiana were documented at Willow Slough during these studies. The western harvest mouse (Reithrodontomys megalotis), not previously known [...]

ABSTRACT: Eight of 12 species of bats naturally occurring in Indiana were caught on Crane Division, Naval Surface Warfare Center: 161 northern myotis (Myotis septentirionalis), 147 red bats (Lasiurus borealis), [...]

ABSTRACT. We summarize results of bat surveys in Hoosier National Forest 1981-2003. Mist net captures included the northern myotis, Myotis septentrionalis (137); red bat, Lasiurus borealis (132); eastern pipistrelle, Pipistrellus [...]

ABSTRACT. As of 1993, we were not aware of any evening bat colonies still existing in Indiana. In 1994, evening bats were located in the Wabash River bottomlands of lower [...]

ABSTRACT. Nine of the 12 species of bats known from Indiana have been observed at Wyandotte Cave during mist-netting or trapping at the entrance and by in-cave counts from 1953 [...]

ABSTRACT. The vertebrate fauna of Indiana recorded since the time of European settlement numbers 208 fish, 38 amphibian, 54 reptilian, 401 avian, and 68 mammalian species. Currently, 19 fish, 9 [...]

ABSTRACT. Between 1987 and 1992 studies were conducted on a large maternity colony of little brown myotis (Myotis lucifugus) in a barn in Clay County near Brazil, Indiana. Evening flight [...]

ABSTRACT On 21 August 1998, we collected fecal samples from 37 eastern pipistrelles (6 females and 31 males) from an abandoned talc mine at Fort Mountain State Park in Murray [...]

ABSTRACT The number of big brown bats in Indiana was estimated using an estimated number of colonies per county times the average number of bats per colony times the number [...]

ABSTRACT At least 37 of the 57 species of mammals occurring in Indiana are found in the Calumet region. These include species as follows: the opossum, 3 shrews, 1 mole, [...]

It is generally assumed that during winter insectivorous bats in cold climates hibernate, and thus do not feed, whereas bats in warmer areas remain active and do feed. However, bats often fly about in winter, even in higher latitudes, and it has been assumed that they were feeding, based on bits of chitin in intestines and on the occurrence of feeding buzzes. However, little brown (Myotis lucifugus) and northern myotis (M. septentrionalis) and big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus) flying in winter in central Indiana do not feed. We examined digestive tracts of red bats (Lasiurus borealis) that were collected in winter in The Great Dismal Swamp, about 250 miles S of Indiana in coastal northeastern North Carolina and southeastern Virginia. In contrast to the bats in Indiana, these bats fed throughout the winter. Moths and flies constituted over 90% of the volume of food in 24 individuals., INTRODUCTION It is generally assumed that during winter insectivorous bats that remain in cold climates hibernate, and thus do not feed, whereas bats in warmer areas remain active and feed, [...]

Tooth attrition is rapid and extensive in soricine shrews. Seemingly, without compensatory morphological changes to increase bite force, older individuals must shift their diet to softer items and risk greater overlap with trophic niches of more numerous younger individuals of syntopic taxa with lower relative bite force. Initial tests of this hypothesis indicated that neither efficiency of jaw mechanics nor mass of the masticatory muscles increased significantly with age (as indexed by length of I1) in 101 Sorex trowbridgii. Similar tests of changes in these characters and hardness of the diet with age for samples of several taxa were inconclusive; coefficients of correlation were significant for a few of the relationships tested. However, a meta-analysis technique for combining coefficients of correlation to test the consensus of sets of independent tests addressing common null hypotheses indicated that overall efficiency of jaw mechanics in western shrews (Sorex) increased significantly with age. Reduction of the length of the resistance moment arm (condyloid-i1 length) with age contributed most to the jaw mechanics-age relationship. Although the mechanism by which the jaw shortens remains unclear, the effect likely is sufficient to prevent a significant increase in age-related overlap of trophic niches of syntopic species of western shrews., INTRODUCTION Tooth attrition in soricine shrews (Insectivora: Soricidae) is rapid. Many invertebrates that form a major component of the diet of shrews (Yates, 1984; Nowak, 1991) have hard chitinous parts [...]

The insects most eaten by big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus) in Indiana were agricultural pest species: scarab beetles (Scarabaeidae), the spotted cucumber beetle (Diabrotica undecimpunctata Chrysomelidae), stinkbugs (Pentatomidae) and leafhoppers (Cicadellidae). Larvae of the genus Diabrotica are the corn rootworms, probably the single most important agricultural pest in the United States. Feeding of bats commenced in spring during the last week of March or the first week of April, and ceased by the 2nd wk of November. Spotted cucumber beetles were important foods in early April, then again in late summer and autumn. Scarabs were very important throughout the active season, but especially in April and May. Green stinkbugs (Acrosternon hilare) were most heavily eaten in late May and early June and again in September. Dipterans, lepidopterans, trichopterans and hymenopterans were minor foods. Since big brown bats are so beneficial, we should protect them legislatively, perhaps federally, by an act similar to the migratory bird treaty act. Farmers should not evict or otherwise persecute bats, but should encourage them to form maternity colonies. Also, bridges could be designed in such a way as to encourage bats to use them as roosts., INTRODUCTION The big brown bat, Eptesicus fuscus, is one of the most common bats in Indiana and the midwestern corn belt. It typically establishes maternity colonies in buildings and other [...]

Eastern red bats (Lasiurus borealis) are nocturnal insectivores distributed throughout eastern North America. While the dietary composition of this species has been broadly studied, dietary variation in Kentucky is not well documented. To evaluate potential regional, seasonal, and reproductive dietary variation for this species, we analyzed fecal samples from 121 individual bats collected throughout Kentucky from June 2004 to September 2006. Fecal samples were dissected under magnification, and prey in fecal samples were visually-identified to ordinal level. Results of our study suggest that overall, beetles (Coleoptera) and moths (Lepidoptera) were consumed about equally. Beetles comprised most of the diet in spring and summer with a shift to moths as the main prey item in autumn. Beetles were consumed more in the Mississippi Valley Loess Plains and Southwestern Appalachian ecoregions, whereas moths were consumed more in the Central Appalachian and Interior Plateau ecoregions. These data suggest variation in the eastern red bat diet throughout Kentucky, which we attribute to climatic and regional environmental factors. We speculate that eastern red bats may favor moths in autumn to build essential energy reserves in preparation for hibernation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT--Because of the paucity of available information regarding the diet of Sorex longirostris, the purpose of our study was to identify and report the contents of digestive tracts of 24 [...]

ABSTRACT: A survey of the distribution and abundance of amphibians and reptiles was conducted at the Newport Chemical Depot in northern Ver million County, Indiana. Based on trapping, hand-collecting, observation, [...]

ABSTRACT: The western harvest mouse, Reithrodontomys megalotis, entered Newton County in northwestern Indiana around 1969. By 1975, this species had extended its range to include seven counties. The harvest mouse [...]

ABSTRACT: Thirty-two species of fishes are known from the Newport Chemical Depot, Vermillion County, Indiana (including its Little Raccoon Creek easement): the American brook lamprey (Petromyzontidae), gizzard shad (Clupeidae), 13 [...]

ABSTRACT: The Indianapolis International Airport is in a highly developed area. The bats there have been studied since 1991 and comprise a diverse community of all the species one might [...]

ABSTRACT: A survey of the distribution and abundance of mammals at the Newport Chemical Depot, Vermillion County, Indiana, showed that at least 33 species of mammals from 14 families are [...]

Dietary preferences of Indiana bats were determined by analyzing 382 fecal pellets collected beneath roost trees in southern Michigan, over parts of 3 yr. Although terrestrial insects (Lepidoptera and Coleoptera) usually dominated the diet of Indiana bats in more southern states, those in Michigan consumed mostly insects associated with aquatic environments. Indiana bats in Michigan ate primarily Trichoptera (55.1% of volume) and Diptera (25.5%), followed by Lepidoptera (14.2%) and Coleoptera (1.4%). Consumption of Diptera was highest during lactation (48.2%), whereas consumption of Lepidoptera was least during this time (7.7%). Although most insectivorous bats do not prey on mosquitoes (Culicidae), these insects were a consistent component of the diet of Indiana bats and were eaten most heavily during pregnancy (6.6%)., INTRODUCTION Knowledge of the diet can provide fundamental insights into the ecology and behavior of an animal, and dietary information is essential for proper management of any species. For example, [...]

Genetic mark-recapture methods are increasingly being used to estimate demographic parameters in species where traditional techniques are problematic or imprecise. The federally endangered Indiana bat Myotis sodalis has declined dramatically and threats such as white-nose syndrome continue to afflict this species. To date, important demographic information for Indiana bats has been difficult to estimate precisely using traditional techniques such as emergence counts. Successful management and protection of Indiana bats requires better methods to estimate population sizes and survival rates throughout the year, particularly during summer when these bats reproduce and are widely dispersed away from their winter hibernacula. In addition, the familial makeup of maternity colonies is unknown, yet important for understanding local and regional population dynamics. We had four objectives in this study. For the first two objectives we investigated the potential use of DNA from fecal samples (fecal DNA) collected at roosts to obtain genetically based mark-recapture estimates of 1) colony size and 2) survival rates, for an Indiana bat maternity colony in Indianapolis, Indiana. The third objective was to compare our genetically based colony-size estimates with emergence counts conducted at the same roost tree to evaluate the genetic mark-recapture method. Our fourth objective was to use fecal DNA to estimate levels of relatedness among individuals sampled at the roost. In the summer of 2008, we collected fecal pellets and conducted emergence counts at a prominent roost tree during three time periods each lasting 7 or 8 d. We genotyped fecal DNA using five highly polymorphic microsatellite loci to identify individuals and used a robust-design mark-recapture approach to estimate survival rates as well as colony size at the roost tree. Emergence count estimates at the roost tree ranged from 100 to 215, whereas genetic mark-recapture estimates were higher, ranging from 122 to 266 and more precise. Apparent survival was 0.994 (SE ¼ 0.04) between sampling periods suggesting that few bats died or permanently emigrated during the course of the study. Relatedness estimates, r, between all pairs of individuals averaged 0.055 ranging from 0 to 0.779, indicating that most individuals were not closely related. We demonstrate here the promise of using fecal DNA to estimate demographic information for Indiana bats and potentially other bat species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT. The movement of bats is a subject requiring greater understanding among conservationists and wildlife managers. Close spatial movements as well as longer spatial movements, such as migration, can impact [...]

Fifty scats of bobcats and 105 scats of coyotes from Cumberland Island, Camden County, Georgia, were examined during this study. Major foods of bobcats were mammals (81.8% volume), followed by birds (13.8%) and vegetation (4.2%), with only 0.2% invertebrates. Major foods of coyotes were plant materials (46.6% volume), mammals (43.8%), and invertebrates (6.0%). This is apparently the first report of coyote foods from Cumberland Island. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated the diet of Corynorhinus rafinesquii (Rafinesque’s Big-eared Bat) in west-central Louisiana by examining fecal pellets collected from beneath 3 bridges used by these bats as day roosts. Fresh fecal material was found under the bridges during every month of the year. We detected 5 insect orders, including 5 families, in fecal pellets collected from 25 August 2005 to 5 January 2007. Lepidoptera represented 93.7% of the total volume and was the only order observed in 100% of our samples. Coleopterans, mostly Scarabaeidae, were the second most abundant food item and represented 5.8% of the total volume. Hemiptera, Diptera, and Hymenoptera together represented 0.4 % of the total volume. We observed Diptera, Hemiptera, Hymenoptera, and Coleoptera in fecal pellets collected under some, but not all bridges. No insect orders were observed that had not previously been reported as prey of Rafinesque’s Big-eared Bats. Our results were similar to those reported in studies conducted in Kentucky, North Carolina, and Florida, and we concluded that Rafinesque’s Big-eared Bats primarily prey upon lepidopterans in Louisiana. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]