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AUTHORS: Ela-Sita Carpenter, University of Missouri
ABSTRACT: A common method for studying the effect of urbanization on a species is to investigate it along an urban-rural gradient. Some studies have suggested that bats are good indicators for determining urbanization's impact on wildlife due to their relatively long lifespan and monoestrous characteristic. The Gwynns Falls Watershed (GFW) is a 3,600 ha watershed that starts in Baltimore County, Maryland and flows southeast into central Baltimore City. I hypothesized that urban bat species richness would decrease as the GFW shifted from rural to urban, resulting in different bat communities along the gradient. From May to August 2016, active acoustic monitoring was conducted at nine sites along the GFW. Over 1,500 calls from seven species were recorded. Big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus) and red bats (Lasiurus borealis) were present at all sites Bat species richness did not decrease as hypothesized but each site had a slightly different community composition. The amount of bat activity (number of calls) also varied at each site and did not appear to follow a known pattern.
