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Determinants of microbat communities in urban forest remnants: a rapid landscape scale assessment

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Abstract

Urbanisation affects fauna in many ways; with some species persisting and going on to dominate urban habitats, while other species decline over time due to habitat disturbance and modification. Microbats comprise a major component of remnant mammalian fauna in urban areas but we have a comparatively poor understanding of how they respond to urbanisation compared to other taxonomic groups. We investigated the impacts of an urban gradient on microbat communities of habitat remnants on the Gold Coast, south-east Queensland, Australia. We conducted acoustic surveys of 34 sites categorised as urban, peri-urban or rural, with an additional five reference sites. A combination of landscape and habitat elements were quantified for each site and their influence on the richness and calling activity of microbats determined. Overall, more microbat species were detected in reference sites followed by peri-urban sites. Rural and urban sites had similar richness, but only 50 % overlap in species recorded. After accounting for sampling effort peri-urban sites were found to have the greatest species richness and calling activity. Three species accounted for 45.4 % of the variation in microbat species detected. Using generalised linear mixed models we found that site area and the extent of urban development in the landscape (i.e. urbanisation index) had the greatest impact on microbat richness and calling activity. Models including logging (clearfelling) and hollow-bearing tree measures were also important. Our results support the use of the urbanisation gradient as a key measure to quantify the impacts of urbanisation on biodiversity. Logging history plays an important role across the landscape as it is a potential driver of other landscape variables such as tree species diversity, stand density and hollow-bearing tree density.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to gratefully acknowledge Greg Ford’s assistance with the identification of microbat calls. Dr Clare Morrison provided comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript. Gold Coast City Council, Brisbane City Council, Logan City Council, Redland City Council and The Department of Resource Management supplied GIS data and reserve access. Thank you also to the many local land holders for allowing access to their properties as well as the volunteers that assisted with the collection of data. Ethics approval from Griffith University (ENV/07/09 AEC) and permits from the Environmental Protection Agency (WITK06680910 and WISP06680710) were obtained for this study.

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  1. Environmental Futures Research Institute, Griffith School of Environment, Griffith University, Gold Coast, QLD, 4222, Australia

    Donna Louise Treby & James Guy Castley

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  1. Donna Louise Treby
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  2. James Guy Castley
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Correspondence to Donna Louise Treby.

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Treby, D.L., Castley, J.G. Determinants of microbat communities in urban forest remnants: a rapid landscape scale assessment. Urban Ecosyst 19, 1351–1371 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-016-0552-2

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