Presence of the Evening bat (Nycticeius humeralis) in westernmost Kansas

The evening bat, Nycticeius humeralis, is an austral species (Armstrong, Choate, and Jones 1986) that ranges from the southeastern United States north to the southern Great Lakes region and west to the central Great Plains (Watkins 1972). In Kansas, the species was known from just four counties (Clay, Douglas, Jewell, and Johnson) in the northeast when Jones, Fleharty, and Dunnigan (1967) reviewed the distributional status of bats in the state. Birney and Rising (1968) subsequently reported specimens of the evening bat from Franklin and Ford counties, the latter in southwestern Kansas, and Kunz, Choate, and George (1980) reported specimens from Barber and Comanche counties in south-central Kansas. Sparks and Choate (2000) added more than a dozen counties, most in north-central Kansas, to the known range of the species in the state and opined that this tree-dwelling species, which previously was rare at the western limit of its range, was becoming increasingly common in riparian corridors. They concluded that the lack of forested habitats in much of western Kansas in the past possibly restricted the range of the evening bat to the eastern twothirds of the state (Sparks and Choate 2000), but that growth of forested habitats along watercourses was enabling this species to expand westward.