Habitat use in the female Alpine long-eared bat (Plecotus macrobullaris): does breeding make the difference?

Recent discoveries of several new, cryptic bat species in Europe, and the growing importance of bat conservation have resulted in an increased research effort to study roost site selection, habitat use and spacing/foraging behaviour of (rare) bat species (Arlettaz, 1999; Mayer and von Helversen, 2001; Mickleburgh et al., 2002; Di Salvo et al., 2009; Whitaker and Karataş, 2009). In fact, before their distinction, cryptic spe cies were biogeographically and ecologically confounded, calling for a careful re-evaluation of their distribution and ecological requirements (Arlettaz, 1999; Sattler et al., 2007; Ashrafi et al., 2010). Habitat requirements may differ even among closely related species: according to the principle of competitive exclusion, species in the same community tend to differentiate their resource exploitation strategies to achieve stable coexistence. Hence, sibling species may co-exist because of niche partitioning (Arlettaz, 1999; Patterson et al., 2003; Russo et al., 2005). Therefore, determining their space and habitat use is essential to understand levels of interspecific competition between them when they occur in sympatry, and to gather a better understanding of factors influencing structure and diversity of bat communities. Recent identification of new sibling species of long-eared bats (genus Plecotus) have increased the number of European species from two (brown longeared bat, P. auritus and grey long-eared bat, P. austriacus) to six (P. macrobullaris — Kiefer and Veith, 2001; Spitzenberger, 2003; P. kolombatovici — Mayer and von Helversen, 2001; Spitzenberger et al., 2002; P. sardus, endemic to Sardinia — Mucedda et al., 2002; P. teneriffae, endemic to the Canary Islands — Ibáñez and Fernán dez, 1985; Juste et al., 2004). The Alpine long-eared bat, P. macrobullaris, is a sibling species of P. auritus (Kiefer and Veith, 2001). It can be reliably identified by mitochondrial DNA sequencing (Kiefer and Veith, 2001; Kiefer et al., 2002; Trizio et al., 2003); recently, a discriminant function based on body measurements has been proposed which correctly classified 97.5% of specimens as belonging to the Plecotus sibling species present in the Alps (Ashrafi et al., 2010). The known distribution range of P. macrobullaris extends from the Pyrenees to Greece and Crete, including the Alps from France to Slovenia (Kiefer and von Helversen, 2004). Acta Chiropterologica, 13(2): 355–364, 2011 PL ISSN 1508-1109 © Museum and Institute of Zoology PAS doi: 10.3161/150811011X624820