Nightly Activities of Mormoopid Bats

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Abstract
A study was made of the nightly activities of four species of mormoopid bats (Pteronotus parnellii, P.personatus, P. davyi, and Mormoops megalophylla) that inhabited a cavern system in the Sierra Madre Occidental in Sinaloa, Mexico. The bats were observed, were mist-netted along heavily traveled flyways, and recaptures of previously marked individuals were recorded. Activity of bats began shortly after sunset and there was considerable light-testing prior to emergence. Some bats began returning to the roost as early as 1.5 hours after the exodus flight began, but most bats appeared to remain away from the roost for from 5 to 7 hours. The congestion just before dawn when masses of returning bats attempted to re-enter the roost suggested that size of the colony may have been limited by size of the roost entrance. Regarding evening dispersal flights: flyways to foraging grounds were long (to at least 3.5 kilometers but almost certainly several times this length for some individuals); bats sometimes used shortcuts along dispersal routes, but normally followed topographic features; in some cases there appeared to be distinct spatial separation between the flyways of different species; individuals showed some fidelity to particular flyways; and natural environmental stimuli may have caused abandonment of regularly used flyways. We estimated that the 400,000 to 800,000 bats comprising the large colony consumed from 1902 to 3805 kilograms of insects each night. Thus, these bats are of considerable significance in the energy flow of tropical ecosystems.

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