Urban trawling bats depend on green and blue space in a subtropical city: implications for urban planning and climate change resilience

Abstract

Efforts to create sustainable cities and urban climate-resilience depend on understanding how wildlife use the urban matrix to guide urban planning and design. Urban environments combine natural elements like topography and waterways, with various intensities of urban development. These combinations shape the spatial environment of cities and influence the diversity and persistence of urban wildlife. Insectivorous bats occur in urban areas, with urban tolerant species correlated with greater mobility and flexible roosting strategies, such as trawling bats. To understand how trawling bats use urban space, we studied patterns of land use selection in an urban population of a trawling bat, the large-footed myotis (Myotis macropus) in a subtropical city. We quantified fine-scale space use using radio telemetry over two seasons using land use categories applied in urban planning and design. Bats used urban land use types in a non-random manner, displaying a preference for green and blue space associated with the recreation land use type at both the landscape and home range scale. Tracked bats used waterways and riparian areas, as well as parkland, sportsgrounds and other green space adjacent to waterways. Trawling bats are dependent on riparian habitats, and these complex habitats are particularly vulnerable to changes to the availability of water resources associated with climate change. Maintaining spatial heterogeneity in urban planning and design by retaining and providing green space along, and adjacent to waterways, will provide a landscape mosaic for urban trawling bats to persist, facilitating climate change resilience in a specialist urban species.