Common noctule
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The common noctule (''Nyctalus noctula'') is a species of insectivorous
bat Bats are mammals of the order Chiroptera.''cheir'', "hand" and πτερόν''pteron'', "wing". With their forelimbs adapted as wings, they are the only mammals capable of true and sustained flight. Bats are more agile in flight than most ...
common throughout Europe, Asia, and North Africa.


Description

The common noctule's short fur is dark brown after moulting in June (males) or July/August (females); later it changes to red-brown before the onset of winter.Braun M. & Dieterlen F. 2003 When awake, the body temperature is but it decreases significantly during inactivity. The body mass of adult common noctule is and they have a wingspan of . The species forages with a rapid flying speed of , sometimes up to . Because of temporally limited availability of insect prey, they have short daily activity periods before sunrise and after sunset of in total one hour or less and so must cope with up to twenty-three hours of fasting a day.


Distribution

Most parts of Europe, central Russia, across the Ural mountain, Caucasus, Turkey, the Near East, to southwestern parts of Siberia, the Himalayas, China, Malaysia, Taiwan and Japan. In Bulgaria, it is widespread and prefers deciduous forests.


Biology


Reproduction and migration

Common noctules roosting in the crevice of a building. The common noctule is a migrating species with female bias, meaning that the females migrate but the males do not. Mating season is in late summer in the wintering areas, and the females store the sperm in the uterus during hibernation until fertilization in spring. During early pregnancy in late April the females migrate north, as far as the Baltic region, to return to their natal maternity colonies and give birth after being pregnant for six to eight weeks. Each female rears one or two young per year. At birth the offspring is about a third of the maternal body weight, and after three to four weeks of suckling the young leave the roost almost fully developed – so the female rears the offspring to full size entirely on milk. Male common noctules do not migrate, but scatter along the females' migration routes to have higher chances of attracting the first females migrating back to the wintering regions. The reproductive cycle of male bats seems to correspond directly to season and food availability and spermatogenesis can be affected by body condition. In early autumn, males develop large testes and aim to attract females with singing calls. While in the harem roosts, males often do not enter torpor, but stay awake and mobile to defend the females from other males trying to copulate. Another reason for the avoidance of torpor during late summer and early autumn can be that spermatogenesis in bats can be delayed when resting metabolic rate is depressed, i.e. during torpor and hibernation. During the summer, male noctules are solitary or form small bachelor groups. In Europe, the young are reared mainly in the northern parts of the distribution area, north of roughly 48°–49°N latitude. With the exception of the main breeding area, several smaller and isolated breeding areas are known – recorded in Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Iberian Peninsula and Italy.


Hibernation

Common noctule bats
hibernate Hibernation is a state of minimal activity and metabolic depression undergone by some animal species. Hibernation is a seasonal heterothermy characterized by low body-temperature, slow breathing and heart-rate, and low metabolic rate. It most ...
in winter, and sometimes congregate in hibernation colonies of up to 1000 individuals. In late summer the adult females migrate back southwards to the wintering areas, the young following later. Hibernation at these latitudes is thought to avoid too many days in winter below . At the beginning of winter, usually in November (but this is strongly dependent on the ambient temperatures), ''N noctula'' start to hibernate in large groups with both sexes in the same roost. Tree holes are not warm enough so they use caves, objects like church steeples or blocks of flats in Eastern Europe, where they are most common hibernating bat species in the cities. Sometimes summer territories and hibernating places are hundreds of kilometres apart.


Diet

When hunting, it often starts flying in early dusk, earlier than most European bats. It flies high above the forested areas that are its preferred habitat, reaching speeds of up to . Common noctule bats mainly eat
beetle Beetles are insects that form the order Coleoptera (), in the superorder Endopterygota. Their front pair of wings are hardened into wing-cases, elytra, distinguishing them from most other insects. The Coleoptera, with about 400,000 describ ...
s,
moth Moths are a paraphyletic group of insects that includes all members of the order Lepidoptera that are not butterflies, with moths making up the vast majority of the order. There are thought to be approximately 160,000 species of moth, many of w ...
s and winged
ant Ants are eusocial insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from vespoid wasp ancestors in the Cretaceous period. More than 13,800 of an estimated total of 22 ...
s.


Echolocation

The common noctule uses two main calls for echolocation. The frequencies of the first are 26–47 kHz, have most energy at 27 kHz and an average duration of 11.5ms.Parsons, S. & Jones, G. 2000. The frequency of the second call is 22–33 kHz, having most energy at 22 kHz and an average duration of 13.8ms.


Distribution and habitat

The common noctule prefers small to medium-sized woodlands, but also forages up to away from the woodland at night. When roosting by day, it usually seeks out tree holes or even bat boxes attached to tree trunks. Generally, the common noctule lives in wooded habitats, but some populations thrive in towns such as
Hamburg (male), (female) en, Hamburger(s), Hamburgian(s) , timezone1 = Central (CET) , utc_offset1 = +1 , timezone1_DST = Central (CEST) , utc_offset1_DST = +2 , postal ...
,
Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...
,
Brno Brno ( , ; german: Brünn ) is a city in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic. Located at the confluence of the Svitava and Svratka rivers, Brno has about 380,000 inhabitants, making it the second-largest city in the Czech Republic ...
and some other central European cities.


Conservation

This species is protected in the European Union under the
Habitats Directive The Habitats Directive (more formally known as Council Directive 92/43/EEC on the Conservation of natural habitats and of wild fauna and flora) is a directive adopted by the European Community in 1992 as a response to the Berne Convention. The E ...
. It is also listed in the
Berne Convention The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, usually known as the Berne Convention, was an international assembly held in 1886 in the Swiss city of Bern by ten European countries with the goal to agree on a set of leg ...
and is specifically targeted by the UNEP- EUROBATS convention. Several national legislatures also protect this species and its habitats. In order to highlight the importance of protecting this species at the European scale, it was selected as "Bat species of the Year" 2016 and 2017 by the pan-European NGO BatLife Europe.


References


Literature cited

*Braun, M. and Dieterlen, F. 2003. Die Säugetiere Baden-Württembergs. Band 1: Allgemeiner Teil, Fledermäuse (Chiroptera): Verlag Eugen Ulmer, Stuttgart. *Ceľuch M. & Kaňuch P. 2005. Winter activity and roosts of the noctule (Nyctalus noctula) in an urban area (Central Slovakia). Lynx (Praha) 36: 39–45. *Dechmann, D. K., Wikelski, M., Varga, K., Yohannes, E., Fiedler, W., Safi, K., Burkhard, W.-D. and O'Mara, M. T. 2014
Tracking post-hibernation behavior and early migration does not reveal the expected sex-differences in a “female-migrating” bat
PLOS ONE 9, e114810. *Görföl, T., Dombi, I., Boldogh, S., & Estók, P. 2009. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Tamas_Goerfoel/publication/50889714_Going_further_South_New_data_on_the_breeding_area_of_Nyctalus_noctula_Schreber_1774_in_Central_Europe/links/00463525d5b40b2323000000/Going-further-South-New-data-on-the-breeding-area-of-Nyctalus-noctula-Schreber-1774-in-Central-Europe.pdf Going further South: new data on the breeding of Nyctalus noctula (Schreber, 1774) in Central Europe]. Hystrix: The Italian Journal of Mammalogy. *Kulzer, E. 1967
Die Herztätigkeit bei lethargischen und winterschlafenden Fledermäusen
Zeitschrift für vergleichende Physiologie 56, 63–94. *Kurta, A., Johnson, K. A. and Kunz, T. H. 1987
Oxygen consumption and body temperature of female little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus) under simulated roost conditions
Physiological Zoology 60, 386–397. *Kurta, A. and Kunz, T. H. 1988
Roosting metabolic rate and body temperature of male little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus) in summer
Journal of Mammalogy 69, 645–651. *McNab, B. K. 1982
Evolutionary Alternatives in the Physiological Ecology of Bats.
In Ecology of Bats, (ed. T. H. Kunz), pp. 151–200. Boston, MA: Springer US. *Obrist, M.K., Boesch, R. & Flückiger, P.F. 2004
Variability in echolocation call design of 26 Swiss bat species: Consequences, limits and options for automated field identification with a synergic pattern recognition approach
Mammalia. 68 (4): 307–32. doi:10.1515/mamm.2004.030. *Parsons, S., Jones, G. 2000
Acoustic identification of twelve species of echolocating bat by discriminant function analysis and artificial neural networks
J Exp Biol. 203 (Pt 17): 2641–2656. . *Petit, E. and Mayer, F. 1999
Male dispersal in the noctule bat (Nyctalus noctula): where are the limits?
Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 266, 1717–1722. *Popa-Lisseanu, A. G. and Voigt, C. C. 2009
Bats on the move
Journal of Mammalogy 90, 1283–1289. *Racey, P. 1982
Ecology of bat reproduction
In Ecology of bats, pp. 57–104: Springer. *Schober, W. and Grimmberger, E. 1989. A guide to bats of Britain and Europe. Hamlyn. *Speakman, J. and Racey, P. 1986
The influence of body condition on sexual development of male brown long‐eared bats (Plecotus auritus) in the wild
Journal of Zoology 210, 515–525. *Strelkov, P.P. 1997. Breeding area and its position in range of migratory bats species (Chiroptera, Vespertilionidae) in East Europe and adjacent territories. Communication 1. - Zool. Zhurnal 76: 1073–1082.


External links

* http://www.bats.org.uk/pages/noctule_bat.html {{Taxonbar, from=Q214846 Bats of Europe Nyctalus Mammals of Asia Mammals described in 1774