Changing the maps of urban bat distribution

Abstract

Over three decades after the establishment of the Birmingham and Black Country Bat Group, the results of just a few years of targeted advanced surveys at woodland sites in the green belt of the county have begun to challenge the misconceptions of bat assemblages in urban areas. The data from the Urban Bat Project have altered the distribution maps of species previously thought to be 'rare', 'very rare' or 'locally extinct' in the county. The rediscovery of Brandt's bat Myotis brandti and the re-assessment of the rarity scores of nine of the remaining 11 extant county species is likely not due to a legitimate increase in their numbers or a broadening of their distribution. It is, rather, attributable to the increase in recent years of higher quality acoustic monitoring devices and also to a concerted increase in the recording of cryptic and non-ubiquitous species in a previously under-studied and under-valued landscape.