Journal article
Ecological processes in urban landscapes: Mechanisms influencing the distribution and activity of insectivorous bats
C Threlfall, B Law, T Penman, PB Banks
Ecography | Published : 2011
Abstract
Urbanisation affects indigenous fauna in many ways; some species persist and even increase in urban areas, whereas others are lost. The causative mechanisms determining changes in distributions and community structure remain elusive. We investigated three hypothesized mechanisms, which influence success or failure of the insectivorous bat assemblage across the urban landscape of Sydney, Australia; landscape heterogeneity (diversity of land uses), productivity (as indexed by landscape geology) and trait diversity. We present data on species richness and activity (bat passes per night) collected systematically using ultrasonic bat detectors from randomly selected landscapes (each 25km 2). Land..
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Funding Acknowledgements
We thank the many private residence and land managers who granted access for field sampling, and the extensive list of field volunteers for their assistance. We also thank the anonymous reviewers who provided helpful comments which greatly improved this manuscript. This research was supported by student grants to CT provided by the Royal Zoological Society of NSW, MA Ingram Trust, The Linnaean Society of NSW and the Ecological Society of Australia.