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Optimizing conservation strategies for Mexican free-tailed bats: a population viability and ecosystem services approach

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Abstract

Conservation planning can be challenging due to the need to balance biological concerns about population viability with social concerns about the benefits biodiversity provide to society, often while operating under a limited budget. Methods and tools that help prioritize conservation actions are critical for the management of at-risk species. Here, we use a multi-attribute utility function to assess the optimal maternity roosts to conserve for maintaining the population viability and the ecosystem services of a single species, the Mexican free-tailed bat (Tadarida brasiliensis mexicana). Mexican free-tailed bats provide ecosystem services such as insect pest-suppression in agricultural areas and recreational viewing opportunities, and may be threatened by climate change and development of wind energy. We evaluated each roost based on five attributes: the maternity roost’s contribution to population viability, the pest suppression ecosystem services to the surrounding area provided by the bats residing in the roost, the ecotourism value of the roost, the risks posed to each roost structure, and the risks posed to the population of bats residing in each roost. We compared several scenarios that prioritized these attributes differently, hypothesizing that the set of roosts with the highest rankings would vary according to the conservation scenario. Our results indicate that placing higher values on different roost attributes (e.g. population importance over ecosystem service value) altered the roost rankings. We determined that the values placed on various conservation objectives are an important determinant of habitat planning.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the numerous bat biologists who participated in our maternity roost risk survey and several anonymous reviewers for their comments on the manuscript. This work was funded by a National Science Foundation award (DEB-1118975) to L. López-Hoffman. Additional support was received from the U.S. Geological Survey’s John Wesley Powell Center for Analysis and Synthesis working group, Animal Migration and Spatial Subsidies: Establishing a Framework for Conservation Markets. Any use of trade, product, or firm names are for descriptive purposes only and do not imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Natural Resources & the Environment, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, 85721, USA

    Ruscena Wiederholt, Laura López-Hoffman & Colleen Svancara

  2. Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, 85721, USA

    Ruscena Wiederholt & Laura López-Hoffman

  3. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, 37996, USA

    Gary McCracken

  4. United States Geological Survey, Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center, 2630 Fanta Reed Road, La Crosse, WI, 54603, USA

    Wayne Thogmartin

  5. United States Geological Survey, Geosciences and Environmental Change Science Center, Denver, CO, 80225, USA

    Jay E. Diffendorfer, Kenneth Bagstad & Darius Semmens

  6. Department of Integrative Biology and Biodiversity Research, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria

    Brady Mattson

  7. U.S. Geological Survey, Fort Collins Science Center, Fort Collins, CO, 80526, USA

    Paul Cryan

  8. Department of Biology, Grand Valley State University, Allendale, MI, 49401, USA

    Amy Russell

  9. Instituto de Ecología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico, Ap. Postal 70–275, 04510, Mexico City, Mexico

    Rodrigo A. Medellín

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  1. Ruscena Wiederholt
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  2. Laura López-Hoffman
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  3. Colleen Svancara
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  4. Gary McCracken
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  5. Wayne Thogmartin
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  6. Jay E. Diffendorfer
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  7. Brady Mattson
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  8. Kenneth Bagstad
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  9. Paul Cryan
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  10. Amy Russell
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  11. Darius Semmens
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  12. Rodrigo A. Medellín
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ruscena Wiederholt.

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Communicated by Melvin Gumal.

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Wiederholt, R., López-Hoffman, L., Svancara, C. et al. Optimizing conservation strategies for Mexican free-tailed bats: a population viability and ecosystem services approach. Biodivers Conserv 24, 63–82 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-014-0790-7

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