Three new bat species in Park

Glacier National Park has three previously unrecorded species of bats flying its night skies, biologists learned earlier this year.

For 22 consecutive nights, Park researchers used special recording devices and mist net traps to get data on the Park's bat population.

All told, biologists found nine bats species - hoary bats, big brown bats, long-eared bats, long-legged bats, little brown bats, Yuma myotis, California myotis and the eastern red bat. The latter three species are new to Glacier Park, park biological technician Lisa Bate said.

Bate along with renowned bat biologist Cori Lausen and a host of volunteers and other biologists, spent three solid weeks surveying the Park last summer. Prior to the study, Glacier was in the dark on its bats.

"We knew nothing," Bate said recently. "This is the first study of bats in the Park."

In fact, the Park had six bat species on its list of known mammals with only positive records of four of those species.

In some cases, researchers used mist nets to capture bats and record basic data about the animals before they were released unharmed. In other cases, they used a device called an Anabat, which identifies and surveys bats by detecting and analyzing their echolocation calls. Bats use high frequency calls - most of which are above the human range of hearing - to navigate in the dark.

Bate said that last summer was tough on bats, The cold, wet spring wasn't good for flying insects that bats feed on. When the temperature at night drops too far below 50 degrees, insects stop flying and the bats stop feeding and go into a state of torpor, where their metabolism slows down.

With poor food sources, researchers found few lactating females - an indication that bats were having a hard time raising young.

There were encouraging signs, however. Most importantly, none of the bats were found to be infected with white nose-syndrome, a fungal infection that has killed more than 1 million bats in the eastern U.S. and is suspected as far west as Oklahoma.

The cause of the fungal infection and how it's spread isn't entirely clear, but some suspect human cavers have inadvertently spread the infection.

The Glacier Park study found that bats like Park bridges, particularly large ones with crannies that heat up during the day and stay warm at night. Bate noted that some Park bridges can be 10 to 15 degrees warmer at night because the concrete absorbs heat from the sun.

Most of the Park's bridges are home to bats, and Park officials will try to make some bridges more bat-friendly. When the Going-to-the-Sun Road's Rose Creek Bridge is replaced, plans call for installing bat boxes under the bridge to make up for the lack of cracks and crevices in the new design.

Bate said more bat research is planned for next summer, with more excursions into the Park's backcountry.

Bate also said research will continue to determine whether bats are hibernating in Glacier Park.

The research is paid for through a Glacier National Park Fund grant.