Natterer's bat (''Myotis nattereri'') is a

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

an vespertilionid

bat Bats are flying mammals of the order Chiroptera (). 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 birds, flying with their very long spread-out ...

with pale

wing A wing is a type of fin that produces both Lift (force), lift and drag while moving through air. Wings are defined by two shape characteristics, an airfoil section and a planform (aeronautics), planform. Wing efficiency is expressed as lift-to-d ...

s. It has brown fur tending to greyish-white on its underside. It is found across most of the continent of Europe, parts of the Near East and North Africa. It feeds on insects and other invertebrates which it catches on the wing or pursues on the ground. In summer it roosts in

deciduous In the fields of horticulture and botany, the term deciduous () means "falling off at maturity" and "tending to fall off", in reference to trees and shrubs that seasonally shed Leaf, leaves, usually in the autumn; to the shedding of petals, aft ...

and

coniferous Conifers () are a group of conifer cone, cone-bearing Spermatophyte, seed plants, a subset of gymnosperms. Scientifically, they make up the phylum, division Pinophyta (), also known as Coniferophyta () or Coniferae. The division contains a sin ...

trees, buildings or bat boxes close to its feeding habitats. In winter it hibernates in caves, tunnels, mines or cellars, usually hiding in crevices. This bat was first described in 1817 by

Heinrich Kuhl Heinrich Kuhl (17 September 1797 – 14 September 1821) was a German people, German naturalist and zoologist. Kuhl was born in Hanau (Hesse, Germany). Between 1817 and 1820, he was the assistant of professor Th. van Swinderen, docent of natural ...

, who named it in honour of the Austrian naturalist

Johann Natterer Johann Natterer (9 November 1787 – 17 June 1843) was an Austrian natural history, naturalist and List of explorers, explorer. He was the son of royal falconer Joseph Natterer and along with his brother Joseph Natterer (1786–1852) took a keen i ...

Description

Natterer's bat is a medium-sized species and grows to a head and body length of with a forearm (elbow to wrist) length of . It weighs between . The short, dense fur on the

dorsal Dorsal (from Latin ''dorsum'' ‘back’) may refer to: * Dorsal (anatomy), an anatomical term of location referring to the back or upper side of an organism or parts of an organism * Dorsal, positioned on top of an aircraft's fuselage The fus ...

(upper) surface of head and body is greyish-brown while the ventral (under) surface is whitish-grey. The ears and the wing membranes are smoky grey. This bat can be distinguished from other similar species by the fact that the free edge of the

interfemoral membrane The patagium (: patagia) is a membranous body part that assists an animal in obtaining lift when gliding or flying. The structure is found in extant and extinct groups of flying and gliding animals including bats, theropod dinosaurs (including ...

between the hind limbs is wrinkled and fringed with stiff, curved hairs and the

calcar The calcar, also known as the calcaneum, is the name given to a spur of cartilage arising from inner side of ankle and running along part of outer interfemoral membrane in bats, as well as to a similar spur on the legs of some arthropods. The cal ...

, a spur of

cartilage Cartilage is a resilient and smooth type of connective tissue. Semi-transparent and non-porous, it is usually covered by a tough and fibrous membrane called perichondrium. In tetrapods, it covers and protects the ends of long bones at the joints ...

that supports the membrane, is shaped like a "S".

Distribution and habitat

The Natterer's bat species complex has a western

Palaearctic The Palearctic or Palaearctic is a biogeographic realm of the Earth, the largest of eight. Confined almost entirely to the Eastern Hemisphere, it stretches across Europe and Asia, north of the foothills of the Himalayas, and North Africa. Th ...

distribution and is native to most of Europe, parts of the Middle East and parts of northern Africa. Its range extends from southern Sweden, Finland and western Russia in the north to Ireland, the United Kingdom, Spain and Portugal to the west. It extends eastwards to Ukraine, western and southwestern

Asia Minor Anatolia (), also known as Asia Minor, is a peninsula in West Asia that makes up the majority of the land area of Turkey. It is the westernmost protrusion of Asia and is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean ...

, the

Levant The Levant ( ) is the subregion that borders the Eastern Mediterranean, Eastern Mediterranean sea to the west, and forms the core of West Asia and the political term, Middle East, ''Middle East''. In its narrowest sense, which is in use toda ...

, the

Caucasus The Caucasus () or Caucasia (), is a region spanning Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is situated between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, comprising parts of Southern Russia, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The Caucasus Mountains, i ...

region, the Kopet Dag Mountains in Turkmenistan, Iran and northern Kazakhstan. Its southern limit is Morocco and Algeria, southwards as far as the

Atlas Mountains The Atlas Mountains are a mountain range in the Maghreb in North Africa. They separate the Sahara Desert from the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean; the name "Atlantic" is derived from the mountain range, which stretches around through M ...

. Records from North Africa are few in number and the population there is likely to be small. Its historic range included

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...

, in which it is now a possibly

extirpated Local extinction, also extirpation, is the termination of a species (or other taxon) in a chosen geographic area of study, though it still exists elsewhere. Local extinctions are contrasted with global extinctions. Local extinctions mark a chan ...

species. It is found from

sea level Mean sea level (MSL, often shortened to sea level) is an mean, average surface level of one or more among Earth's coastal Body of water, bodies of water from which heights such as elevation may be measured. The global MSL is a type of vertical ...

up to an altitude of about . It is found in forests, parkland, and in open countryside with scattered woodland. It roosts in holes in trees, buildings and nestboxes. In winter it hibernates in caves, mineshafts, tunnels and cellars, hiding itself away in cracks and crevices usually near the cave entrance. It is largely a resident species and the summer roosts and winter hibernation sites are usually within of each other. Myotis nattereri species group distribution

Myotis nattereri species group distribution

Behaviour

Natterer's bat is nocturnal and

insectivorous A robber fly eating a hoverfly An insectivore is a carnivorous animal or plant which eats insects. An alternative term is entomophage, which can also refer to the human practice of eating insects. The first vertebrate insectivores we ...

. It emerges at dusk to hunt for insects and uses echolocation to find prey and orient itself at night. Like many other species of bat, it emits sounds at too high a

frequency Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit of time. Frequency is an important parameter used in science and engineering to specify the rate of oscillatory and vibratory phenomena, such as mechanical vibrations, audio ...

for most humans to detect and then interprets the echoes created in order to build a "sound picture" of its surroundings. The frequencies used by this bat species for echolocation lie between 23 and 115 kHz and have most energy at 53 kHz. The individual signals have an average duration of 3.8 ms. The wide

bandwidth Bandwidth commonly refers to: * Bandwidth (signal processing) or ''analog bandwidth'', ''frequency bandwidth'', or ''radio bandwidth'', a measure of the width of a frequency range * Bandwidth (computing), the rate of data transfer, bit rate or thr ...

of its frequency-modulated search signals enables it to detect prey only a few centimetres from vegetation and it does not use

vision Vision, Visions, or The Vision may refer to: Perception Optical perception * Visual perception, the sense of sight * Visual system, the physical mechanism of eyesight * Computer vision, a field dealing with how computers can be made to gain und ...

olfaction The sense of smell, or olfaction, is the special sense through which smells (or odors) are perceived. The sense of smell has many functions, including detecting desirable foods, hazards, and pheromones, and plays a role in taste. In humans, ...

or sounds emitted by its prey for this purpose. The bat feeds on the wing and it mostly catches insects in flight but it is also able to feed on prey items such as spiders and caterpillars dangling close to foliage on silken threads. During a study of the bat's diet, examination of droppings showed that it can also gather prey items from the ground. The diet was found mostly to consist of large

Diptera Flies are insects of the order Diptera, the name being derived from the Greek δι- ''di-'' "two", and πτερόν ''pteron'' "wing". Insects of this order use only a single pair of wings to fly, the hindwings having evolved into advance ...

(flies) but

Trichoptera The caddisflies (order Trichoptera) are a group of insects with aquatic larvae and terrestrial adults. There are approximately 14,500 described species, most of which can be divided into the suborders Integripalpia and Annulipalpia on the basis ...

(caddisfly),

Hymenoptera Hymenoptera is a large order of insects, comprising the sawflies, wasps, bees, and ants. Over 150,000 living species of Hymenoptera have been described, in addition to over 2,000 extinct ones. Many of the species are parasitic. Females typi ...

(bees, wasps, ants and hoverflies) and

Arachnida Arachnids are arthropods in the class Arachnida () of the subphylum Chelicerata. Arachnida includes, among others, spiders, scorpions, ticks, mites, pseudoscorpions, harvestmen, camel spiders, whip spiders and vinegaroons. Adult arachnids ...

(spiders and harvestmen) were also commonly eaten. The remains of other prey items occasionally found in the droppings included

Lepidoptera Lepidoptera ( ) or lepidopterans is an order (biology), order of winged insects which includes butterflies and moths. About 180,000 species of the Lepidoptera have been described, representing 10% of the total described species of living organ ...

(moths),

Coleoptera Beetles are insects that form the Taxonomic rank, order Coleoptera (), in the superorder Holometabola. Their front pair of wings are hardened into wing-cases, elytra, distinguishing them from most other insects. The Coleoptera, with about 40 ...

(beetles),

Hemiptera Hemiptera (; ) is an order of insects, commonly called true bugs, comprising more than 80,000 species within groups such as the cicadas, aphids, planthoppers, leafhoppers, assassin bugs, bed bugs, and shield bugs. They range in size from ...

(bugs),

Dermaptera Earwigs make up the insect order Dermaptera. With about 2,000 species in 12 families, they are one of the smaller insect orders. Earwigs have characteristic cerci, a pair of forceps-like pincers on their abdomen, and membranous wings folde ...

(earwigs) and

Chilopoda Centipedes (from Neo-Latin , "hundred", and Latin language, Latin , "foot") are predatory arthropods belonging to the class Chilopoda (Ancient Greek , ''kheilos'', "lip", and Neo-Latin suffix , "foot", describing the forcipules) of the subphyl ...

(centipedes). This bat may use its

to catch prey and the fringing hairs may have a sensory function. It has been shown that it can land on the ground to pick up and pursue invertebrates that are active at night, and continues to emit search signals in order to locate them precisely. Breeding takes place in the spring and many Natterer's bats may congregate in a nursery roost. After fertilisation, a female normally gives birth to a single offspring after a

gestation Gestation is the period of development during the carrying of an embryo, and later fetus, inside viviparous animals (the embryo develops within the parent). It is typical for mammals, but also occurs for some non-mammals. Mammals during pregn ...

period of fifty to sixty days, but twins sometimes occur. Weaning takes place six or seven weeks later and the juvenile becomes sexually mature the following year.

Status

The

IUCN The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. Founded in 1948, IUCN has become the global authority on the status ...

has listed the Natterer's bat in its Red List of Threatened Species as being of "

Least Concern A least-concern species is a species that has been evaluated and categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as not being a focus of wildlife conservation because the specific species is still plentiful in the wil ...

" because it has a very wide distribution and is abundant in many parts of its extent. The population trend seems to be steady and no significant threats have been identified. The IUCN does note however that in some parts of its range woodlands are under threat and land management practices are changing. Roosting sites in trees and buildings may be destroyed and in Africa, cave roosting habitats are being damaged. The bat is used in traditional medicine practices in North Africa. Natterer's bats are protected under the European Habitats Directive, the

Bonn Convention The Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals, also known as the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) or the Bonn Convention, is an international agreement that aims to conserve migratory species throughout their r ...

(Eurobats) and the Berne Convention. In the United Kingdom their rarity means that woodlands containing the species may be considered for notification as

Sites of Special Scientific Interest A Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in Great Britain, or an Area of Special Scientific Interest (ASSI) in the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland, is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom and Isle ...

Special Areas of Conservation A special area of conservation (SAC) is defined in the European Union's Habitats Directive (92/43/EEC), also known as the ''Directive on the Conservation of Natural Habitats and of Wild Fauna and Flora''. They are to protect the 220 habitats and ap ...

and may attract a grant under

Natural England Natural England is a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. It is responsible for ensuring that England's natural environment, including its land, flora and fauna, ...

Environmental Stewardship Environmental stewardship (or planetary stewardship) refers to the responsible use and protection of the natural environment through active participation in conservation efforts and sustainable practices by individuals, small groups, nonprofit org ...

scheme.

References

External links