Natterer's bat

Natterer's bat
Natterer's Bat
Conservation status
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Chiroptera
Family: Vespertilionidae
Genus: Myotis
Species: M. nattereri
Binomial name
Myotis nattereri
(Kuhl, 1817)

Natterer's bat (Myotis nattereri) is a European bat with pale wings. It has brown fur, also seen on the leg wing membrane, tending to white on its underside. It is found across most of the continent, but is considered scarce.

Contents

Habitat

The UK distribution can be found on the National Biodiversity Network website here.

In summer they roost in deciduous and coniferous trees, buildings or bat boxes close to their feeding habitats.

Protection

They are protected under the European Habitats Directive. In the UK their rarity means that Woodlands containing the species may be considered for notification as a Site of Special Scientific Interest or Special Areas of Conservation and may attract a grant under Natural Englands Environmental Stewardship scheme.

Echolocation

The frequencies used by this bat species for echolocation lie between 23-115 kHz, have most energy at 53 kHz and have an average duration of 3.8 ms. [1][2]

Named for the Austrian naturalist Johann Natterer

References

  • Chiroptera Specialist Group (1996). Myotis nattereri. 2006. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. www.iucnredlist.org. Retrieved on 12 May 2006.
  1. ^ Parsons, S. and Jones, G. (2000) 'Acoustic identification of twelve species of echolocating bat by discriminant function analysis and artificial neural networks.' J Exp Biol., 203: 2641-2656.
  2. ^ Obrist, M.K., Boesch, R. and Flückiger, P.F. (2004) 'Variability in echolocation call design of 26 Swiss bat species: Consequences, limits and options for automated field identification with a synergic pattern recognition approach.' Mammalia., 68 (4): 307-32.

External links