Inventory of Bat Species in Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks 2002 Surveys. Draft report prepared for the Sierra Nevada Inventory and Monitoring Program.

Pierson, Elizabeth; Rainey, William

This report summarizes the findings for the first season of field surveys (summer of 2002) for a project to inventory the bat species of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. We conducted a review of existing records, both in the literature and in 39 museums in North America. We located 52 records representing 11 species from localities within the park, and another 67 records for localities in the vicinity of the parks. Of the 17 species expected to occur in both Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks, 15 were identified in Kings Canyon and 14 in Sequoia, using both mist netting and acoustic methods, and sampling a series of localities from Ash Mountain to >3,000 m elevation. This effort provides the first records for either park for three species: Lasiurus blossevillii, Lasiurus cinereus, and Myotis ciliolabrum. Eleven species were captured in mist nets. The three most commonly encountered were Myotis yumanensis, Eptesicus fuscus, and Tadarida brasiliensis. The rarest species in mist net captures were Lasiurus cinereus, Myotis californicus, Myotis ciliolabrum, and Myotis volans. Mist net captures provided evidence of reproductive populations in the park for eight species. We also sampled 107 sites using acoustic detectors, and obtained 50.259 acoustic files that could be identified to species or species group. We obtained unequivocal acoustic records for three species not captured in mist nets: Eumops perotis, Euderma maculatum, Lasiurus blossevillii, and were able to identify a fourth species, Myotis lucifugus, by a combination of acoustic and visual observations (= active acoustic monitoring). We assigned each sampling site to a vegetation class and a habitat category based on structural features (e.g., cliff, river, wet meadow). A preliminary analysis suggests that both vegetative and structural features may be meaningful predictors of occurrence for some species. This report also provides preliminary species accounts for the 17 species expected to occur in the park, providing information from the literature and the authors’ experience regarding distribution and habitat associations for each.