Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

Sexual segregation is a phenomenon present in many vertebrate taxa, including the bat order Chiroptera. Sexual segregation is a social and/or habitat separation based on sex and is driven by varying causes such as sexual dimorphism, resource and physiological limitations, predator avoidance and many other factors. It can be intrasexual and intersexual, as observed in the focal species of this study, Myotis daubentonii – Daubenton’s bat.
Most studies of this temperate bat have been conducted in regions with an altitudinal gradient which have shown that the Daubenton’s bat exhibits a temporal, intra- and inter-sexual segregation across an altitudinal gradient. With females and some males preferring the downstream and more productive habitats whilst other males create upstream colonies in the suboptimal foraging and roosting microclimates.
In this study, carried out in the central and southern parts of Sweden, I conducted a landscape analysis on mist net trapping data, accumulated over a period of 34 years (1986 -2020) to determine if sexual segregation occurred by habitat selection within a region with no significant elevation gradient. The results indicated that some landscape features were different between foraging sites where only males were found and those that had only females or both males and females. These included differences in the size of forests, distance to and size of water surfaces, built-up areas, and open lands, in addition to a sexually segregated habitat selection was observed across latitudinal and longitudinal gradients.