Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Distribution of the Noctule Bat (Nyctalus noctula) in Rostov Region and the Problem of Expansion of the Northern Boundary of Its Wintering Area

  • Published:
Russian Journal of Biological Invasions Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The materials on the distribution of Nyctalus noctula in Rostov Region are given. On the basis of this, the northern border of its winter habitat and the seasonal characteristics of the stay are specified. The presented findings of this species in the south and extreme east of the region, which were made in the summer and in the off season showed that this territory was used both during the migrRegionation period and as summer habitats. In the scientific literature, the expansion of the winter range of this species over the past decades has been noted. Findings of wintering animals in high-rise buildings of cities are considered as confirming facts of expansion. However, the issue regarding the expansion of wintering boundaries remains ambiguous because all these detections are made in the climatic “risk zone.” The results of modeling of the probabilistic area of winter habitats of N. noctula in conditions of natural shelters (hollows of trees) showed that, over the past 70 years, there have been no changes in the boundaries and its northern limits do not correspond to those that were previously indicated. In the east of the European range of this species, the northern boundary of the natural wintering area passes through Rostov Region and ends to the east at the latitude of the city of Astrakhan. The most important bioclimatic factors that determine wintering within such a territory are the average temperature of the driest and the average temperature of the coldest quarters of the year and the minimum temperature of the coldest month. In the regions to the north of this area owing to the severity of winters, the overwintering of animals in natural shelters is unlikely. On the basis of the results obtained, the total wintering area of N. noctula is divided into two zones. The first zone is the territory where wintering is massive and possible in poorly protected natural shelters; the second zone is a territory with a climatic “risk zone,” where only a very small part of population of the species remains, and the spaces protected from external factors in multistory buildings of settlements serve as shelters. Findings of wintering colonies of noctules in the second zone that are located far outside the natural wintering area can obviously be considered as an invasive process, which in migratory bats has an adaptive character and is associated with the development of urbanized landscapes.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 4.
Fig. 5.

Similar content being viewed by others

REFERENCES

  1. Akimov, A., Observations from the previous year, Psovaya i Ruzheinaya Okhota, 1904, no. 7, p. 122.

  2. Aksenenko, E.V. and Sherstyanykh, E.I., Chiroptera of the Voronezh Region: Ecological and Faunistic Overview, in Sovremennye problemy zoologii pozvonochnykh i parazitologii: Materialy III Mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii (Modern Problems of Vertebrate Zoology and Parasitology: Proc. III Int. Sci. Conf.), Voronezh: Izdatelsko-Poligraficheskii Tsentr Voronezhsk. Gos. Univ., 2011, pp. 20–26.

  3. Bats/Chiroptera in Kharkov. https://vk.com/bat_kharkov. February 10, 2023.

  4. Boria, R.A., Olson, L.E., Goodman, S.M., and Anderson, R.P., Spatial filtering to reduce sampling bias can improve the performance of ecological niche models, Ecol. Model., 2014, no. 275, pp. 73–77. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2013.12.012

  5. Boyles, J.G., Storm, J.J., and Brack, V.Jr., Thermal benefits of clustering during hibernation: A field test of competing hypotheses on Myotis sodalis, Funct. Ecol., 2008, vol. 22, pp. 632–636.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Bykov, Y.A., Nyctalus noctule, Portal “Mammals of Russia,” 2018. https://rusmam.ru/data/view?id=227350. CIted Fenruary 10, 2023.

  7. Dormann, C.F., Elith, J., Bacher, S., Buchmann, C., Carl, G., Carré, G., García Marquéz, J.R., Gruber, B., Lafourcade, B., Leitão, P.J., Münkemüller, T., McClean, C., Osborne, P.E., Reineking, B., Schröder, B., Skidmore, A.K., Zurell, D., and Lautenbach, S., Collinearity: A review of methods to deal with it and a simulation study evaluating their performance, Ecography, 2013, vol. 36, no. 1, pp. 27–46. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-0587.2012.07348.x

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Elith, J., Quantitative methods for modeling species habitat: Comparative performance and an application to Australian plants, in Quantitative Methods for Conservation Biology, Ferson, S. and Burgman, M., Eds., 2002, pp. 39–58. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-22648-6_4

    Book  Google Scholar 

  9. Elith, J., Phillips, S.J., Hastie, T., Dudik, M., Chee, Y.E., and Yates, C.J., A statistical explanation of MaxEnt for ecologists, Diversity and Distributions, 2011, vol. 17, pp. 43–57.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Fick, S.E. and Hijmans, R.J., WorldClim 2: New 1km spatial resolution climate surfaces for global land areas, International Journal of Climatology, 2017, vol. 37, no. 12, pp. 4302–4315.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Fielding, A.H. and Bell, J.F., A review of methods for the assessment of prediction errors in conservation presence absence models, Environmental Conservation, 1997, vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 38–49.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Formozov, A.N., On the migrations of bats (Chiroptera: Vespertilionidae), Doklady Akad. Nauk SSSR, Series A, 1927, no. 17, pp. 272–274.

  13. Galkin, G.A., Klimaticheskie anomalii v Krasnodarskom krae (Climatic Anomalies in the Krasnodar Territory), Krasnodar: Soyuz Nauchnykh i Inzhenernykh Obshchestv USSR, 1989.

  14. Galkin, G.A., Climate of Kuban in the past: Memories of the future?, Risovodstvo. Nauchno-Proizvodstvennyi Zhurnal, 2014, no. 2 (25), pp. 52–56.

  15. Gazaryan, S.V., Observations of noctule bat hibernation in tree hollows in the Ciscaucasia, Plecotus et al., 2002a, no. 5, pp. 28–33.

  16. Gazaryan, S.V., Ecological and faunistic analysis of the bat population (Chiroptera) of the Western Caucasus, Cand. Sci. (Biol.) Dissertation, Moscow, 2002b.

  17. Gazaryan, S.V. and Bakhtadze, G.B., Boiler pipe—A technogenic trap for bats, Plecotus et al., 2002, no. 5, pp. 99–101.

  18. Gazaryan, S.V. and Kazakov, B.A., Ecology of the noctule bat Nyctalus noctula in the North Caucasus and Ciscaucasia: Communication 1. Nature of stay, shelters, coloniality, mating behavior, Plecotus et al., 2002, pars specialis, pp. 74–82.

  19. Gazaryan, S.V. and Malinovkin, A.V., About the hibernation of noctule bats in a tree hollow in Rostov-on-Don, Plecotus et al., 2010, no. 13, pp. 48–49.

  20. Gazaryan, S.V., Bakhtadze, G.B., and Malinovkin, A.V., Current state of bat research in the Rostov Region, Plecotus et al., 2010, no. 13, pp. 50–58.

  21. George, N.D., A.A. Akimov [Obituary], Psovaya i Ruzheinaya Ohota, 1907, no. 9, p. 130.

  22. Godlevska, L.V., Northward expansion of the winter range of Nyctalus noctula (Chiroptera: Vespertilionidae) in Eastern Europe, Mammalia, 2015, vol. 79, no. 3, pp. 315–324.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Dulitskii, A.I. and Kovalenko, I.S., Materials on the bats of Crimea in the zoological collections of Ukraine and Russia, in Voprosy razvitiya Kryma: Problemy inventarizatsii Krymskoi bioty (Issues of Crimea’s Development: Problems of Inventory of the Crimean Biota), Simferopol, Tavriya-Plus, 2003, no. 15, p. 197–210.

  24. Il’in, V.Y., Smirnov, D.G., Krasilnikov, D.B., and Yanyaeva, N.M., Materialy k kadastru rukokrylykh (Chiroptera) Evropeiskoi Rossii i smezhnykh regionov (Materials for the Cadastre of bats (Chiroptera) of European Russia and Adjacent Regions), Penza: Penzensk. Gos. Ped. Univ., 2002.

  25. Il’chenko, O.G., Nyctalus noctula, Portal “Mammals of Russia,” 2021. https://rusmam.ru/data/view?id=193357. Accessed February 10, 2023.

  26. Il’chenko, O.G., Sample: Portal “Mammals of Russia,” 2023. https://rusmam.ru/sample/records?id=s_9_2a9bfa7681. Accessed February 10, 2023.

  27. Ill’yukhin, Y., Representatives of the order Chiroptera in the collection of the Museum of Nature of the Kharkiv National University named after V.N. Karazin, Theriologia Ukrainica, 2018, no. 16, pp. 77–84.

  28. Ioff, I.G. and Tiflov, V.E., Opredelitel’ Afaniptera (Suctoria–Aphaniptera) Yugo-Vostoka SSSR (Determinant of Aphaniptera (Suctoria–Aphaniptera) of the Southeast USSR), Stavropol, 1954.

  29. Kameneva, S.P. and Panutin, K.K., On the migrations of some species of bats, Ohrana Prirody i Ozelenenie, 1960, no. 3, pp. 117–119.

  30. Kazakov, B.A. and Yarmysh, N.N., On the fauna of bats of Ciscaucasia, Materialy Pervogo Vsesoyuznogo soveshchaniya po rukokrylym (Chiroptera) (Proc. I All-Union Meeting on Bats (Chiroptera)), Leningrad, 1974, pp. 69–72.

  31. Kozhurina, E.I. and Gorbunova, Y.A., On the hibernation of bats in the Volga delta, Plecotus et al., 2004, no. 7, pp. 104–105.

  32. Kritskaya, T.I., Rodents of the Dono-Tsimlyansk sandy massif, their economic significance and their control, Cand. (Sci.) Dissertation, Rostov-on-Don, 1956.

  33. Kuzenkov, V.I., On the study of the flea fauna (Aphaniptera) of the endemic plague region in the North Caucasus, Sbornik rabot protivochumnoi organizatsii Severo-Kavkazskogo kraya za 1928 god: Izvestiya Gosudarstvennogo Mikrobiologicheskogo instituta v g. Rostove-na-Donu (Collection of Works of the Anti-Plague Organization of the North Caucasus Region for 1928: Proc. State Microbiol. Inst. in Rostov-on-Don), 1929, vol. 9, pp. 106–125.

  34. Labunets, N.F. and Degtyaryova, L.V., On the fleas of bats in the North Caucasus, Parasitologiya, 1985, vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 177–180.

    Google Scholar 

  35. Lukyanova, Yu., Nyctalus noctula, Portal “Mammals of Russia,” 2021. https://rusmam.ru/data/view?id=173472. Accessed February 10, 2023.

  36. Mateo, R.G., Vanderpoorten, A., Munoz, J., Laenen, B., and Desamore, A., Modeling species distributions from heterogeneous data for the biogeographic regionalization of the European bryophyte flora, PLoS One, 2013, vol. 8, no. 2, p. e55648. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0055648

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  37. Merow, C., Smith, M.J., and Silander, J.A., A practical guide to MaxEnt for modeling species’ distributions: What it does, and why inputs and settings matter, Ecography, 2013, vol. 36, no. 10, pp. 1058–1069.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  38. Oganesyan, V.V., Climatic changes as risk factors for the Russian economy, Gidrometeorologicheskie Issledovaniya i Prognozy, 2019, no. 3 (373), pp. 161–184.

  39. Orlov, E.I., Materials for the study of the fauna of terrestrial vertebrates of the Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, Materialy k poznaniyu fauny Nizhnego Povolzh’ya (Materials for the Study of the Fauna of the Lower Volga Region), Saratov, 1928, vol. 2, pp. 1–20.

    Google Scholar 

  40. Panyutin, K.K., Long-distance migrations of Chiroptera ringed in the Voronezh reserve, in Migratsii Zhivotnykh (Animal Migrations), Leningrad: Science, 1968, vol. 5, pp. 117–119.

    Google Scholar 

  41. Panyutin, K.K., Chiroptera, Voprosy teriologii. Itogi mecheniya mlekopitayushchih (Issues in Theriology. Results of Mammal Ringing), Moscow: Nauka, 1980, pp. 23–46.

    Google Scholar 

  42. Phillips, S.J., A Brief Tutorial on Maxent, Lessons in Conservation, 2010, vol. 3, pp. 108–135.

    Google Scholar 

  43. Phillips, S.J. and Dudik, M., Modeling of species distributions with MaxEnt: New extensions and a comprehensive evaluation, Ecography, 2008, vol. 31, pp. 161–175.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  44. Phillips, S.J., Anderson, R.P., and Schapire, R.E., Maximum entropy modeling of species geographic distributions, Ecol. Model., 2006, vol. 190, pp. 231–259.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  45. Popov, B.M., On the seasonal migrations of bats, Priroda, 1941, no. 2, pp. 87–90.

  46. Portal “Mammals of Russia.” http://rusmam.ru/. Accessed January 20, 2023.

  47. Preobrazhenskii, V., From Ekaterinodar (Kuban Region), Okhotnichya Gazeta, 1895, no. 14, p. 218.

  48. Slinko, L.I., Dynamics of the number of social voles in the arid regions of Rostov Region, in Sbornik nauchnykh rabot Dagestanskoi protivochumnoi stantsii (Proceedings of the Dagestan Anti-Plague Station), Makhachkala, 1961, pp. 320–330.

  49. Smirnov, D.G., Kurmaeva, N.M., Vekhnik, V.P., and Shepelev, A.A., On the finding of hibernating noctule bats (Nyctalus noctula) in the Middle Volga region, Zool. Zh., 2010, vol. 89, no. 2, pp. 233–237.

    Google Scholar 

  50. Strelkov, P.P., The breeding range and its position within the range of migratory species of bats (Chiroptera, Vespertilionidae) in Eastern Europe and adjacent territories. Communication 1, Zool. Zh., 1997, vol. 76, no. 9, pp. 1073–1082.

    Google Scholar 

  51. Strelkov, P.P., Materials on the hibernation of migratory species of bats (Chiroptera) in the territory of the former USSR and adjacent regions. Communication 2. Nyctalus noctula, Plecotus et al., 2002, no. 5, pp. 35–55.

  52. Thomas, D.W., The physiological ecology of hibernation in vespertilionid bats, Symp. Zool. Soc. London, 1995, no. 67, pp. 233–244.

  53. Thomas, D.W., Dorais, M., and Bergeron, J.-M., Winter energy budgets and cost of arousals for hibernating little brown bats, Myotis lucifugus, J. Mammal., 1990, vol. 71, no. 3, pp. 475–479.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  54. Tiflov, V.E., Skalon, O.I., and Rostigaev, B.A., Opredelitel’ blokh Kavkaza (Key to Fleas of the Caucasus), Stavropol, 1977, pp. 1–278.

    Google Scholar 

  55. Unkurova, V.I., On the ecology of Chiroptera in the Kalmyk ASSR, Fauna i ekologiya zhivotnykh Kalmykii i sopredel’nykh raionov (Fauna and Ecology of Animals of Kalmykia and Adjacent Regions), Elista: Kalmyk University, 1984, pp. 92–97.

    Google Scholar 

  56. Velikaniv, V., Notes on bats of the Nizhyn district, Ukrainskii Myslivets ta Rybalka, 1930, no. 11–12, pp. 27–29.

  57. Vinogradova, V.V., Bioclimatic indexes in evaluation of modern climate warming on human life conditions of the Russian population, Izv. Ross. Akad. Nauk, Ser. Geogr., 2009, no. 3, pp. 82–89.

  58. Vlashchenko, A.S., Finding the noctule bat Nyctalus noctula hibernating in Kharkov, Vestn. Zool., 1999, vol. 33, nos. 4–5, p. 76.

    Google Scholar 

  59. Vlashchenko, A.S., Bat findings in the building of Kharkov National University, Visnik Kharkivskogo Universitetu no. 551. Seriya: “Aktualni Problemy Suchasnoi Nauki v Doslidzhennyakh Molodykh Vchenykh m. Kharkova,” 2002, no. 2, pp. 212–216.

  60. Warren, D.L. and Seifert, S.N., Ecological niche modeling in Maxent: The importance of model complexity and the performance of model selection criteria, Ecological Applications, 2011, vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 335–342. https://doi.org/10.1890/10-1171.1

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  61. Yarmysh, N.N., Kazakov, B.A., Sonina, I.Y., and Usvaiskaya, A.A., New finds of bats in the North Caucasus, in Rukokrylye (Chiroptera): Voprosy teriologii (Bats (Chiroptera): Issues in Theriology), Moscow, 1980, pp. 72–77.

  62. Zavarzina, K.V. and Kuzenkov, V.I., Materials collected by the Atamanskaya Anti-Plague Laboratory in the Dubovsky district of the Salsky region for 1927 and 1928 (Report of the laboratory in the Atamanskaya stanitsa), Sbornik rabot protivochumnoi organizacii Severo-Kavkazskogo kraya za 1928 god: Izvestiya Gosudarstvennogo Mikrobiologicheskogo instituta v g. Rostove-na-Donu (Collection of Works of the Anti-Plague Organization of the North Caucasus Region for 1928: Proceedings of the State Microbiological Institute in Rostov-on-Don), 1929, vol. 9, pp. 34–50.

  63. Zubko, Y.P., Outline of the fauna of Chiroptera in the southern southeast of the Odessa region, Institut Zoologiï ta Biologiï AN URSR: Zbirnik Prac’ Zoologichnogo Muzeyu, 1937, vol. 20, pp. 121–128.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Funding

Data analysis and manuscript preparation were completed at the expense of the authors' own funds.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Penza State University, 440026, Penza, Russia

    D. G. Smirnov

  2. Rostov-on-Don Antiplague Scientific Research Institute of Rospotrebnadzor, 344002, Rostov-on-Don, Russia

    A. V. Zabashta

Authors
  1. D. G. Smirnov
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. A. V. Zabashta
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to D. G. Smirnov or A. V. Zabashta.

Ethics declarations

ETHICS APPROVAL AND CONSENT TO PARTICIPATE

This work does not contain any studies involving human and animal subjects.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

The authors of this work declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Additional information

Publisher’s Note.

Pleiades Publishing remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Smirnov, D.G., Zabashta, A.V. Distribution of the Noctule Bat (Nyctalus noctula) in Rostov Region and the Problem of Expansion of the Northern Boundary of Its Wintering Area. Russ J Biol Invasions 14, 621–633 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1134/S2075111723040148

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S2075111723040148

Keywords:

Search

Navigation