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Title

FOOD HABITS OF THE HOARY BAT (LASIURUS CINEREUS) DURING SPRING MIGRATION THROUGH NEW MEXICO.

Authors

VALDEZ, ERNEST W.; CRYAN, PAUL M.

Abstract

Hoary bats (Lasiurus cinereus) exhibit continental patterns of migration that are unique to bats, but details about their behaviors during migration are lacking. We captured 177 hoary bats in spring and early summer 2002 as individuals migrated through the Sandia Mountains of north-central New Mexico. Our results support earlier observations of asynchronous timing of migration between sexes of L. cinereus during spring, with females preceding males by ca. 1 month. We provide the first evidence that hoary bats may travel in dispersed groups, fly below the tree canopy along streams, and feed while migrating during spring. Analysis of guano revealed that diet of L. cinereus consisted mostly of moths, with more than one-half of samples identified as Noctuidae and Geometridae. We observed a late-spring decline in consumption of moths that might be related to seasonal changes in abundance of prey, differential selection of prey by bats, or sampling bias. We suspect that spring migration of L. cinereus through New Mexico temporally coincides with the seasonal abundance of moths.

Subjects

NEW Mexico; HOARY bat; HAIRY-tailed bats; FOOD habits; ORAL habits; LEPIDOPTERA; ANIMAL migration; NOCTUIDAE; COLON (Insects)

Publication

Southwestern Naturalist, 2009, Vol 54, Issue 2, p195

ISSN

0038-4909

Publication type

Academic Journal

DOI

10.1894/PS-45.1