One of the first bat species recognized as endangered by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Indiana bats hibernate in caves in the winter, some 80 percent of them in nine caves in Kentucky, Indiana, and Missouri. Even though they mate in the fall, female Indiana bats do not become pregnant until spring, when they migrate to summer tree roost sites. Forming maternity colonies of 20 to 100 members under the loose bark of roost trees, the females each bear a single young.
Declines in Indiana bat populations, first noted in the 1960s, were initially attributed to human disturbance of the hibernation caves. When populations continued to decline even after caves were gated to block access, researchers began to study maternity roost locations as a possible factor in the decline of the species.
In 1999, researchers from Tennessee Technological University (TTU) found an Indiana bat roost in a dead eastern hemlock tree in the Nantahala National Forest in western North Carolina. This was the farthest south a maternity roost had ever been found, and the first report of Indiana bats using conifers for this purpose. Female bats usually move north from their winter caves, roosting in small forest tracts within the great farmlands of Missouri, Iowa, Indiana, and Illinois. The discovery of a roost so far outside the normal range started a new round of studies on the roosting behavior and range of the endangered forest bat.
Since 2000, Loeb and her assistants, in cooperation with TTU's Harvey and Britzke, have spent long summer nights netting and tracking Indiana bat
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Contact: Susan Loeb
sloeb@fs.fed.us
864-656-4865
Southern Research Station - USDA Forest Service
15-Jul-2003