Enhanced Access to Habitats by Using Buildings as Ecological Stepping Stones

Extending the aforementioned argument that bats may benefit from using buildings as shelters by shortening travel distances to foraging habitats, one could argue that bats may even be able to explore and exploit new habitats by using buildings as ecological stepping stones. For example, some uniform and homogenous agricultural habitats, such as the former prairies of the Midwestern USA, are nearly void of roosting structures. Therefore, it is almost impossible for aerial-hawking insectivorous bats to use these habitats, unless artificial roosting structures are available. Here, buildings may present pivotal resources for bats to survive in an otherwise hostile environment. Farm buildings, villages, and cities may create structurally complex islands used by bat colonies (Coleman and Barclay 2012a), and this could possibly lead to an increase in local species richness. Some synanthropic bats, such as Mops condylurus, are capable of using exceedingly hot roosts (40 °C) which allow them to colonize habitats that other bats with a lower tolerance toward high roost temperatures are not able to exploit (Maloney et al. 1999), suggesting that heat tolerance might be favorable for bats with a synanthropic lifestyle.

In forested areas, buildings may provide roosting structures for cave-roosting bats, i.e., for bats that do not use tree hollows or crevices. By using buildings as roosts, these bats may gain access to other habitats. For example, in a forest habitat in Central Europe, bats that typically do not occupy tree cavities, such as Eptesicus serotinus and Vespertilio murinus, will instead inhabit buildings. By doing this, they gain access to insect-rich forest habitats (Mazurska and Ruczyn´ski 2008).

Buildings can also provide roosting sites for cave-roosting bats in urban areas. For example, Otomops martiensseni exploits buildings only in the city of Durban, South Africa, while elsewhere in its range it uses caves as roosts. Despite the reduced availability of food and intensive large-scale agricultural land use in the surrounding landscape, the species is quite common in Durban (Fenton et al. 2002). Similarly, Moutou's free-tailed bat, Mormopterus francoismoutoui, uses a variety of human structures (e.g., roof slats, window shutters) across the island of La Réunion, Mauritius, yet it was thought to be restricted to roosts in lava tubes and crevices along cliff faces before the colonization of the island by European settlers (~AD 1500; Goodman et al. 2008a). Seemingly, this species has profited from the large-scale changes that occurred on this island over the past centuries. In summary, buildings may present an important resource for synanthropic bats that could increase foraging ranges of individual bats as well as the diversity of local bat assemblages.