Long-Term Increase in Hibernating Bats in Swedish Mines — Effect of Global Warming?

High latitude northern bats (Eptesicus nilssonii) reveal adaptations to both high and low ambient temperatures

Insectivorous bats at northern latitudes need to cope with long periods of no food for large parts of the year. Hence, bats which are resident at northern latitudes throughout the year will need to undergo a long hibernation season and a short reproductive season where foraging time is limited by extended daylight periods. Eptesicus nilssonii is the northernmost occurring bat species worldwide and hibernates locally when ambient temperatures (Ta) limit prey availability. Therefore, we investigated the energy spent maintaining normothermy at different Ta, as well as how much bats limit energy expenditure while in torpor. We found that, despite being exposed to Ta as low as 1.1°C, bats did not increase torpid metabolic rate, thus indicating that E. nilssonii can survive and hibernate at low ambient temperatures. Furthermore, we found a lower critical temperature (Tlc) of 27.8°C, which is lower than in most other vespertilionid bats, and we found no indication of any metabolic response to Ta up to 37.1°C. Interestingly, carbon dioxide production increased with increasing Ta above the Tlc, presumably caused by a release of retained CO2 in bats that remained in torpor for longer and aroused at Ta above the Tlc. Our results indicate that E. nilssonii can thermoconform at near-freezing Ta, and hence maintain longer torpor bouts with limited energy expenditure, yet also cope with high Ta when sun exposed in roosts during long summer days. These physiological traits are likely to enable the species to cope with ongoing and predicted climate change.

The genome sequence of the northern bat, Eptesicus nilssonii (Keyserling & Blasius, 1839)

We present a genome assembly from an individual Eptesicus nilssonii (the northern bat; Chordata; Mammalia; Chiroptera; Vespertilionidae), derived from the placental tissue of a pregnancy that resulted a male pup. The genome sequence is 2,064.1 megabases in span. Most of the assembly is scaffolded into 26 chromosomal pseudomolecules, including the X and Y sex chromosomes. The mitochondrial genome has also been assembled and is 17.04 kilobases in length.

Bat responses to climate change: a systematic review

Understanding how species respond to climate change is key to informing vulnerability assessments and designing effective conservation strategies, yet research efforts on wildlife responses to climate change fail to deliver a representative overview due to inherent biases. Bats are a species-rich, globally distributed group of organisms that are thought to be particularly sensitive to the effects of climate change because of their high surface-to-volume ratios and low reproductive rates. We systematically reviewed the literature on bat responses to climate change to provide an overview of the current state of knowledge, identify research gaps and biases and highlight future research needs. We found that studies are geographically biased towards Europe, North America and Australia, and temperate and Mediterranean biomes, thus missing a substantial proportion of bat diversity and thermal responses. Less than half of the published studies provide concrete evidence for bat responses to climate change. For over a third of studied bat species, response evidence is only based on predictive species distribution models. Consequently, the most frequently reported responses involve range shifts (57% of species) and changes in patterns of species diversity (26%). Bats showed a variety of responses, including both positive (e.g. range expansion and population increase) and negative responses (range contraction and population decrease), although responses to extreme events were always negative or neutral. Spatial responses varied in their outcome and across families, with almost all taxonomic groups featuring both range expansions and contractions, while demographic responses were strongly biased towards negative outcomes, particularly among Pteropodidae and Molossidae. The commonly used correlative modelling approaches can be applied to many species, but do not provide mechanistic insight into behavioural, physiological, phenological or genetic responses. There was a paucity of experimental studies (26%), and only a small proportion of the 396 bat species covered in the examined studies were studied using long-term and/or experimental approaches (11%), even though they are more informative about the effects of climate change. We emphasise the need for more empirical studies to unravel the multifaceted nature of bats' responses to climate change and the need for standardised study designs that will enable synthesis and meta-analysis of the literature. Finally, we stress the importance of overcoming geographic and taxonomic disparities through strengthening research capacity in the Global South to provide a more comprehensive view of terrestrial biodiversity responses to climate change.

Dramatic decline of northern bat Eptesicus nilssonii in Sweden over 30 years

We monitored northern bat Eptesicus nilssonii (Keyserling & Blasius, 1839) acoustically along a 27 km road transect at weekly intervals in 1988, 1989 and 1990, and again in 2016 and 2017. The methodology of data collection and the transect were the same throughout, except that the insect-attracting mercury-vapour street-lights along parts of the road were replaced by sodium lights between the two survey periods. Counts along sections of the transect with and without street-lights were analysed separately. The frequency of bat encounters in unlit sections showed an average decline of 3.0% per year, corresponding to a reduction of 59% between 1988 and 2017. Sections with street-lights showed an 85% decline over the same period (6.3% per year). The decline represents a real reduction in the abundance of bats rather than an artefact of changed distribution of bats away from roads. Our study conforms with another long-term survey of the same species on the Baltic island of Gotland. Our results agree with predictions based on climate change models. They also indicate that the decline was caused directly by the disuse of the insect-attracting mercury-vapour street-lights, which may have resulted in lower availability of preferred prey (moths). In the 1980s, E. nilssonii was considered the most common bat in Sweden, but the subsequent decline would rather qualify it for vulnerable or endangered status in the national Red List of Threatened Species.