Color me shocked!
Phys.org is reporting research that shows bats and endangered species do better at beaver habitat! What a total surprise. I don’t know how mamy revelations like this my old ticker can take.
Beavers create habitats for bats and support endangered species
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any species benefit from the habitats that beavers create by building dams—and not just aquatic life. A new study by the WSL and Eawag research institutes published in the Journal of Animal Ecology shows that more bats hunt in beaver territories than outside of them.
The researchers compared two sections of eight rivers in the Swiss Plateau, one with a beaver dam and one without any beaver influence. They recorded the echolocation calls of bats hunting insects in order to estimate their numbers, and counted flying insects caught in special traps just above the water surface. They also looked at the quality of the vegetation with and without beavers, including the number of standing and fallen dead trees, and the plant species and the forest structure, i.e., how patchy and varied the canopy is.
Okay so the researchers are counting bats where the beavers are and where they are not. Any guesses about what they found? Ooh Ooh I know call on me!
On average, five bat species were found per night at beaver ponds and four at other sections of the stream, out of a total of 30 native species in Switzerland. Endangered species on the red list were also more frequently found flying at beaver ponds. The bats also hunted 2.3 times more frequently in beaver territories than in the control sections, which can be deduced from the structure of their echolocation calls. “I would not have expected such a significant increase in bat numbers,” says Valentin Moser, who conducted the study as part of his doctoral thesis at the WSL.
What attracted the bats? It was not only the more diverse, open tree population and the dead wood in the beaver territories but also the larger number of insects. “The quality of the habitat is better in beaver territories and the amount of food is higher than outside them,” says Moser.
I’m guessing the bats aren;t they for the view. In addition to trapping sediment and organic materials that get broken down by macro insects that become food for all kinds of insects, beaver are constantly moving and removing mud on the dams and lodges. All this activity has got to stir up insects too.
I mean have you ever noticed more robins and thrushes hanging around when you do some gardening? Of course you have.
One of the endangered species, the western barbastelle bat, sleeps under flaking pieces of bark on standing dead trees, for example. “These are common in beaver systems,” says Moser. Some of the trees die because beavers fell them, others because of the dammed water. “The tree trunks remain standing for years and provide a very valuable, because rare, habitat.”
The researchers emphasize that beavers can help protect endangered species such as bats as natural supporters. Christof Angst, head of the national beaver office at info fauna, the National Data and Information Center on Swiss Fauna, agrees: “Almost all bats are endangered and are on the Red List. They need support, and beavers seem to be providing just that.”
“Beavers are recreating functional, highly species-rich and resilient water bodies, and they are doing so more cheaply and more effectively than humans with their engineering skills and excavators,” says Angst.
Yes beavers help bats. It’s a thing. It’s nice to see the Swiss finally climbing on board the beaver wagon. They were dragging their feet a while back.
Beavers help bats. Pass it on.
