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Little brown bats
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The Manitoba Bat Blitz
White-Nose Syndrome
(WNS) Alert
Bats
need your help!
WNS has
not been found in Manitoba
yet but bats with the disease
often behave strangely in winter and spring, flying outside of hibernation
sites, even when there is still snow on the ground. Reports from the public
have been critical for early detection in the Northeastern U.S., Ontario and Quebec.
If you observe bats flying or roosting outside anytime during winter please
immediately contact Manitoba Conservation (or your provincial equivalent if
outside Manitoba)
or contact us at (204) 258-2909 or mbbatblitz@hotmail.com.
ALSO - If you
have bats in your home or cottage or know the location of a bat colony in a
building or forest in Manitoba or Northwestern Ontario, we would also love to hear from
you! Please email us (using “Bat Blitz” in the subject line) or call the
Bat Blitz at (204) 258-2909.
Bats are among the most widespread of mammals, but are also some
of our most misunderstood, possibly because they are active at night and
rarely encountered by people. However, bats do ecologically important jobs
for people and are important parts of many ecosystems in Manitoba and around the world. The most
obvious benefit of Manitoba
bats results from their role as the primary predators of night-flying
insects. Bats eat enormous quantities of moths, beetles, and other insects,
many of which are pests of crops and forests. Recent studies from other parts
of the world have highlighted the importance of insect-eating bats in
controlling forest damage by insects and saving farmers millions of dollars
in crop losses and pesticide costs.
In Manitoba
we are lucky to have a number of caves in the inter-lake region that, each
winter, house tens of thousands of hibernating little brown bats. The bats
also use the caves as focal points for mating in early autumn, when they form
“mating swarms” of up to thousands of individuals. They do not
roost in the caves during the fall mating swarms but likely roost in nearby
forest until the beginning of hibernation, later in the fall.
Thanks to banding data collected by the Manitoba Speleological
Society, we know that some of these individual bats return to the same caves
each winter. Little brown bats can live over 30 years in the wild and some
individuals outfitted with forearm bands in the late 1980s) have been
returning to the same caves each winter for nearly 20 years. See the blue
band just peeking out on the right forearm of one of the bats in the photo
above – this is an old bat!
Despite what we know, we still have a lot to learn about these
animals that is critical for protecting their populations. These bats spend
the winter in the caves and then appear to move throughout the province (and
possibly into Ontario, Saskatchewan,
and the United States)
during summer, roosting in trees, cottages and other buildings. It is
critical to understand where, when and how far these animals are moving,
especially in light the new threat to bats from White-nose Syndrome (WNS).
WNS first appeared in New York state in
2006/2007 and has spread throughout the northeastern U.S. and into Ontario
and Quebec
in only 4 years. Mortality rates reach 100% in some caves and over a million bats
have been killed so far. Information from the public about bat colonies is
critical for helping us understand the movements of bats and hopefully
figuring out ways to address this devastating wildlife disease.
We are grateful to the Manitoba
Hydro Forest Enhancement Program for funding the Manitoba Bat Blitz
  
A few bat
facts and bat benefits:
All Manitoba’s
bats are insectivorous and can eat their body weight in insects on a given
night. During lactation a lactating little brown bat can eat 5,000
mosquito-sized bugs per night!
Bats are popular with farmers, because they eat grasshoppers and
other insects that are potentially detrimental to crops.
Bats are not rodents - they belong to the order Chiroptera
(which means “hand wing”). Their wings have four fingers and a
thumb. They are the only group of mammals that has evolved the ability to
fly.
Bats are incredibly diverse with approximately 1100 species
worldwide (19 of these occur in Canada).
Bats occur on every continent (except Antarctica)
wherever there are trees or other sites for them to use as roosts.
Bats in Manitoba
Manitoba is home to six bat
species. All Manitoba
bats are insectivorous, and eat mainly beetles, moths, and midges, but also
crickets, grasshoppers, and mosquitoes. Three of the six species are
migratory and fly south for the winter and three are hibernators. The three
migratory species are silver-haired bats (Lasionycteris
noctivagans), eastern red bats (Lasiurus
borealis), and hoary bats (Lasiurus
cinereus). The migratory bats are solitary-roosting species and roost
mainly in tree cavities, underneath exfoliating bark, or underneath foliage.
For this reason these species are often referred to as migratory tree bats.
The hibernating bats include little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus), big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus), and northern long-eared bats (Myotis septentrionalis). The
hibernators form colonies and often inhabit larger roosts, including caves,
buildings, cottages, houses, and other human-made structures, in addition to
trees. These bats, in particular little brown bats, are more conspicuous than
the migratory tree bats because of the variety of their roost selection and
are likely more familiar to humans.
  
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