Chris Stanley, who was a PgCert Ecological Survey Techniques student at the Oxford University Department for Continuing Education, has published his very interesting project on how urban bat activity if affected by wooded streets and light levels in the Journal of Urban Ecology with me as a senior author. The study found that in Leicester, UK, the most common urban bat, which was the common pipistrelle (Pipistrellus pipistrellus), was more active in wooded compared to tree-less streets, but that the street light level (dim vs bright) did not influence its activity level.
Stanley, C., Bagniewska, J. M., Grabowska-Zhang, A. and Hesselberg, T. (2023). Wooded streets, but not streetlight dimming, favour bat activity in a temperate urban setting, Journal of Urban Ecology 9, juad011. doi.org/10.1093/jue/juad011
Abstract: Urbanization damages biodiversity, reducing people’s connection to nature and negatively impacting the survivability of local species. However, with small adjustments, the damage could be mitigated. In temperate regions, several bat species inhabit urban areas, and with urbanization set to increase, adapting urban areas to improve their suitability for bats is imperative. Therefore, we investigated if wooded streets and streetlight dimming in an urban setting influenced bat activity. Static bat detectors were used to compare wooded versus non-wooded, and bright versus dim streets in Leicester, UK, on predominantly residential streets. The collected calls were quantified into bat activity (passes per night). Six species were identified, but the common pipistrelle (Pipistrellus pipistrellus) was dominant, making up 94.1% of all calls, so it was the sole species included in the statistical model. Wooded streets had significantly higher bat activity than non-wooded streets, but bright and dim streets were not significantly different. The results suggest that wooded streets were being used as green corridors, with common pipistrelles possibly following them to conceal themselves from predators, such as the tawny owl, and the proliferation of wooded streets in urban areas could allow the formation of better-connected populations. Streetlight dimming did not affect bat activity, but no light-averse bats were detected, likely because even the most dimmed streets deterred them despite street lighting increasing food availability by attracting insects. Therefore, an alternate solution, such as part-night lighting, may be required to increase the suitability of urban areas to light-averse species.
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