Ábrahám Levente (szerk.): Válogatott tanulmányok X. - Natura Somogyiensis 25. (Kaposvár, 2014)

Winkler D. - Erdő Á. - Mille J. - Kovács H.: New data on the distribution of Barbastelle bat (Barbastella barbastellus) in Western Hungary

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Natura Somogyiensis

In 2013 acoustic bat surveys have been carried out in several Natura 2000 sites in Western Hungary. This paper presents newly recorded distribution data of the barbastelle bat in Vas and Somogy counties.

Material and methods

Study area

The surveys were carried out in several Natura 2000 sites in Vas and Somogy Counties; Western Hungary, the list of surveyed sites are as follow:

Vas County

Ablánc-patak völgye (1 366.3 ha)

Kenyéri repülőtér (589.0 ha)

Pinka (455.2 ha)

Rába és Csömöc völgy (11 781.0 ha)

Somogy County Boronka-melléke (10 643.7 ha)

Dékány-hegy (881.1 ha)

Jánosházi-erdő és Égett-berek (591.2 ha)

Kisbajomi erdők (1 280.6 ha)

Mernyei-erdő (237.4 ha)

Mocsoládi-erdő (2 629.7 ha)

Pati-erdő (349.8 ha)

Törökkoppányi-erdők (2 167.7 ha)

The surveyed area covered a total of 32972.7 hectares.

Survey methods

Bat surveys were carried out three times in 2013, between the end of April and mid- September, roughly following the guidelines by the Agreement on the Conservation of Populations of European Bats (Battersby 2008). In each night the recording started shortly after sunset under good weather conditions with no rain, strong wind or low temperature.

For the acoustic surveys Pettersson D500X detectors (Pettersson Elektronik, Uppsala, Sweden) were used. In each survey sites 1 km long transects in every 500 hectares were determined to cover major habitat types. Point count method was used to survey rivers and streams, setting one point per 5 kilometers. The detector was recording for a total of 20 minutes in each sampling point.

Data analysis

The identification of barbastelle bat from its echolocation call is possible with a highly reasonable confidence. The barbastelle bat typically alternates two call types in a sequence (Fig. 1): a. call with peak frequency at ~32 kHz, start frequency at ~40 kHz and end frequency at ~28; b. a low intensity call with peak frequency at ~42 kHz, start frequency at ~45 kHz and end frequency at 30-35 kHz (Dietz et al. 2009, Russ 2012).