Prioritizing bat roosts for conservation with a global multicriteria bat roost priority index based on community science
López-Bosch, David (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Biologia Animal, de Biologia Vegetal i d'Ecologia)
Tanalgo, Krizler (University ofSouthern Mindanao. Department of Biological Sciences,College of Science and Mathematics)
Puig-Montserrat, Xavier (Universitat de Vic - Universitat Central de Catalunya. Centre Tecnològic BETA)
Páramo, Ferran (Universitat de Vic - Universitat Central de Catalunya. Centre Tecnològic BETA)
Marín, Eric (Centre de Recerca Ecològica i d'Aplicacions Forestals)
Flaquer, Carles (Museu de Ciències Naturals de Granollers)
López-Baucells, Adrià (Museu de Ciències Naturals de Granollers)

Fecha:	2025
Resumen:	Prioritization in conservation is crucial for the development of efficient and effective decision-making policies. For many decades, the importance of some species and their habitats has been assessed and applied in conservation legislation, but bats and their diurnal roosts have ofbeen overlooked. Several approaches have been used to categorize bat roosts based on their conservation importance. However, such assessments are often limited to expert-level assessments, are developed for specific regions, or do not consider long-term monitoring data from community science. We devised an index, the bat roost priority index (BRP), for prioritization of bat roosts for conservation in which community science and roost seasonality, uniqueness, and vulnerability are integrated. Using community data from 568 bat roosts, we applied the BRP to the 50 most well-sampled and compared the results with 3 other indices. We then examined the strengths and limitations of the different indices. We also used the BRP to define important bat conservation areas in specific regions in terms of underground and aboveground roosts, an important need and common request from policy makers. The BRP improved on previous prioritizations in that it classifies roosts based on biotic and vulnerability variables, provides a linear classification of all assessed roosts according to conservation action priority, and offers objective quantification of the threats affecting a roost. To illustrate the potential of the BRP, we defined important areas for bat conservation in Catalonia (Spain) based on the index. The BRP is available on the Bat Monitoring Programme online platform, where index values are calculated and shown for every registered bat roost. The BRP can be easily adapted and thus, has strong scalability potential for use with regional to continental datasets.
Derechos:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, i la comunicació pública de l'obra, sempre que no sigui amb finalitats comercials, i sempre que es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original. No es permet la creació d'obres derivades.
Lengua:	Anglès
Documento:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Materia:	Bat conservation ; Caves ; Chiroptera ; Citizen science ; Conservation planning ; Mines ; Overground roosts ; Underground roosts
Publicado en:	Conservation biology, December 2025, art. e70189, ISSN 1523-1739

DOI: 10.1111/cobi.70189

13 p, 1.2 MB

El registro aparece en las colecciones:
Documentos de investigación > Documentos de los grupos de investigación de la UAB > Centros y grupos de investigación (producción científica) > Ciencias > CREAF (Centre de Recerca Ecològica i d'Aplicacions Forestals)
Artículos > Artículos de investigación
Artículos > Artículos publicados