ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Ecol. Evol.
Sec. Urban Ecology
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fevo.2025.1596619
This article is part of the Research TopicSpatial Aspects of Urban Animal Ecology and Conservation Biology, Volume IIView all articles
Variation in water surface area and its impacts on bat drinking activity in an urban environment
Provisionally accepted
Peyton Elizabeth Harper
Victoria Jane Bennett*- Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, United States
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The availability and accessibility of water resources are important factors influencing bat presence in urban areas. As bats drink 'on the wing', total surface area of a water sources determines overall water availability, but the presence of clutter dictates water accessibility. Understanding how water accessibility influences bat resource use may therefore provide a more accurate measure of water availability in urban environments. To explore this, we assessed how variation in water surface area influenced bat activity and species richness in an urban area. We conducted surveys at six study sites in Tarrant County, Texas, USA in 2023 and 2024 using a thermal camera to measure the total duration of bat presence and the number of drinking events. Additionally, we used an acoustic detector to record the number of species recorded drinking at the sites during each survey. A drone was used to evaluate water surface area metrics, including fundamental and realized surface areas, maximum patch sizes, and the longest stretches of continuous area. Our findings indicated that decreasing the length of available surface was associated with reduced bat activity. Notably, drinking activity, a key indicator of water resource use, declined with increasing clutter due to litter, emergent vegetation, algal blooms, and even fallen trees. These results suggest that the presence of clutter, in particular, may limit and even prevent bats from accessing water. Effective management of urban water sources should prioritize clutter removal to improve water accessibility for bats and support a diverse urban wildlife community.
Keywords: Chiroptera, Drinking Behavior, Urban wildlife, resource accessibility, Resource availability, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
Received: 19 Mar 2025; Accepted: 30 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Harper and Bennett. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Victoria Jane Bennett, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, United States
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