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Influence of local landscape and time of year on bat-road collision risks

View ORCID ProfileCharlotte Roemer, Aurélie Coulon, Thierry Disca, Yves Bas
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.07.15.204115
Charlotte Roemer
1Centre d’Ecologie et des Sciences de la Conservation (CESCO), Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Sorbonne Université – Paris, France
2Biotope – Mèze, France
3CEFE, Univ Montpellier, CNRS, Univ Paul Valéry Montpellier 3, EPHE, IRD, – Montpellier, France
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  • For correspondence: charlotte.roemer@lilo.org
Aurélie Coulon
1Centre d’Ecologie et des Sciences de la Conservation (CESCO), Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Sorbonne Université – Paris, France
3CEFE, Univ Montpellier, CNRS, Univ Paul Valéry Montpellier 3, EPHE, IRD, – Montpellier, France
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Thierry Disca
2Biotope – Mèze, France
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Yves Bas
1Centre d’Ecologie et des Sciences de la Conservation (CESCO), Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Sorbonne Université – Paris, France
3CEFE, Univ Montpellier, CNRS, Univ Paul Valéry Montpellier 3, EPHE, IRD, – Montpellier, France
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Abstract

Roads impact bat populations through habitat loss and collisions. High quality habitats particularly increase bat mortalities on roads, yet many questions remain concerning how local landscape features may influence bat behaviour and lead to high collision risks (e.g. influence of distance to trees, or of vegetation density). When comparing the potential danger of different road sections, the most popular method today is the use of simple bat detectors to assess the local densities of current populations at road sites. Yet, it is not known to which extent bat behaviour influences collisions (i.e. bats flying at vehicle height or on the side or above, co-occurrence of bats and vehicles). Behaviour is very rarely taken into account in practice, and this might lead to hazardous site selections for mitigation. Our goals were thus (i) to estimate how local landscape characteristics affect each of the conditional events leading to collisions (i.e. bat presence, flight in the zone at collision risk and bat-vehicle co-occurrence), and (ii) to determine which of the conditional events most contributed to collisions risks.

In this study, we recorded bat activity and characterised flight behaviour with three variables: position at collision risk, bat-vehicle co-occurrence, and flight path orientation, using acoustic flight path tracking at 66 study sites in the Mediterranean region for two to five full nights. We modelled the effect of the local landscape, i.e. in a radius of 30 m around the road (vegetation height, distance, density and orientation), road features (road width, traffic volume) and the time of year on eleven species or species groups. We built models for each conditional probability of the road collision risk (i.e. species density, presence in the zone at risk, bat-vehicle co-occurrence) and multiplied their estimates to calculate the overall collision risk.

Our results show that the local landscape had different effects on bat density and presence in the zone at collision risk. Increasing distance to trees and decreasing tree height were associated with a decrease in bat density at roads. Forests were the local landscapes where bats flew more often in the zone at collision risk. The overall collision risk was higher either in forests or at tree rows perpendicular to the road depending on species. Contrary to common preconceptions, mid-range echolocators seemed to be generally more at risk of collision than short-range or long-range echolocators. In addition, collision risk was greatest in summer or autumn for most species. Finally, bats mainly followed the road axis regardless of the type of landscape.

Our results contribute to a better understanding of bat movements in different local environments at the scale where they directly sense their surroundings with echolocation calls. Disentangling bat density from flight behaviour allowed us to better understand the temporal and spatial contributors of roadkills, and to provide guidance for road impact assessment studies.

Competing Interest Statement

Biotope is an environmental consultancy involved in road impact assessment studies. Two of the authors, Charlotte Roemer and Thierry Disca, were employees at Biotope during the time of the study. They thus declare a financial conflict of interest. Aurelie Coulon and Yves Bas declare that they have no financial conflict of interest with the content of this article. All of the authors take complete responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of their analysis. In addition, Aurelie Coulon is one of the PCI Ecology recommenders.

Footnotes

  • Cite as: Roemer C, Coulon A, Disca T, Bas Y (2020) Influence of local landscape and time of year on bat-road collision risks. bioRxiv, 2020.07.15.204115, version 3 peer-revied and recommended by Peer Community in Ecology. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.07.15.204115

  • This article has been peer-reviewed and recommended by Peer Community in Ecology https://doi.org/10.24072/pci.ecology.100067

  • Version 3 of this preprint has been peer-reviewed and recommended by Peer Community In Ecology (https://doi.org/10.24072/pci.ecology.100067)

  • https://github.com/Charlotte-Roemer/bat-road-collision-risks

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission.
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Influence of local landscape and time of year on bat-road collision risks
Charlotte Roemer, Aurélie Coulon, Thierry Disca, Yves Bas
bioRxiv 2020.07.15.204115; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.07.15.204115
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Influence of local landscape and time of year on bat-road collision risks
Charlotte Roemer, Aurélie Coulon, Thierry Disca, Yves Bas
bioRxiv 2020.07.15.204115; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.07.15.204115

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