Katrina M. Morris | Geology Reports

USGS2024

The state of the bats in North America

The world's rich diversity of bats supports healthy ecosystems and important ecosystem services. Maintaining healthy biological systems requires prompt identification of threats to biodiversity and immediate action to protect species, which for wide-ranging bat species that span geopolitical boundaries warrants international coordination. Anthropogenic forces drive the threats to bats throughout North America and the world. We conducted an international expert elicitation to assess the status of 153 bat species in Canada, the United States, and Mexico. We used expert assessment to determine the conservation status, highest impact threats, and recent population trends for these species. We found that 53% of North American bat species have moderate to very high risk of extinction in the next 15 years. The highest impact threats varied with species and country, and four IUCN threat categories had the greatest overall impacts: Climate Change, Problematic Species (including disease), Agriculture, and Energy Production. Experts estimated that 90% of species assessed had decreasing population trends over the past 15 years, demonstrating the need for conservation action. Although the state of North American bats is concerning, we identify threats that can be addressed through internationally collaborative, proactive, and protective actions to support the recovery and resilience of North American bat species.

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences↗

USGS2024

Assessing bridges, culverts, and tunnels for bat presence and use

No abstract available.

Report↗

USGS2021

The scope and severity of white-nose syndrome on hibernating bats in North America

Assessing the scope and severity of threats is necessary for evaluating impacts on populations to inform conservation planning. Quantitative threat assessment often requires monitoring programs that provide reliable data over relevant spatial and temporal scales, yet such programs can be difficult to justify until there is an apparent stressor. Leveraging efforts of wildlife management agencies to record winter counts of hibernating bats, we collated data for 5 species from over 200 sites across 27 U.S. states and 2 Canadian provinces from 1995 to 2018 to determine the impact of white-nose syndrome (WNS), a deadly disease of hibernating bats. We estimated declines of winter counts of bat colonies at sites where the invasive fungus that causes WNS ( Pseudogymnoascus destructans ) had been detected to assess the threat impact of WNS. Three species undergoing species status assessment by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ( Myotis septentrionalis , Myotis lucifugus , and Perimyotis subflavus ) declined by more than 90%, which warrants classifying the severity of the WNS threat as extreme based on criteria used by NatureServe. The scope of the WNS threat as defined by NatureServe criteria was large (36% of Myotis lucifugus range) to pervasive (79% of Myotis septentrionalis range) for these species. Declines for 2 other species ( Myotis sodalis and Eptesicus fuscus ) were less severe but still qualified as moderate to serious based on NatureServe criteria. Data-sharing across jurisdictions provided a comprehensive evaluation of scope and severity of the threat of WNS and indicated regional differences that can inform response efforts at international, national, and state or provincial jurisdictions. We assessed the threat impact of an emerging infectious disease by uniting monitoring efforts across jurisdictional boundaries and demonstrated the importance of coordinated monitoring programs, such as the North American Bat Monitoring Program (NABat), for data-driven conservation assessments and planning.

Conservation Biology↗