National Park Service

Revised Relative Abundance Estimates and Temporal Activity of Bats at Three Great Lakes National Parks Based on Acoustic Data National Park Service

Publisher Marketing: In this study I re-analyzed acoustic bat data collected from June-August 2003 that was part of a baseline inventory of bat species in three national parks in the Lake Superior region. While the original study presented base-line data on the presence/absence of bat species in these parks, this reanalysis provides estimates of relative abundance and temporal activity of the identified species. Using a suite of recently developed acoustic analysis tools I created species specific filters. This allowed me to parse calls from non-fragmented sequences and differentiate between two species Myotis septentrionalis and Myotis lucifugus that were combined into a general Myotis spp. category. Using the Acoustic Activity Index (AI) it was possible to derive relative abundance estimates for each species and park. Temporal activity patterns are also presented as summaries for each species and park. An example of how spatially linked acoustic data can be useful for park management is also presented. All acoustic files were examined and the textual header data was updated with species names, locations and x, y location coordinates. An Access relational database with spatially explicit links, and relative abundance values for all species identified was also created providing a more robust archive of the data.