Design and deployment of two bat echolocation monitoring systems: passive and mobile

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The Idaho Department of Fish and Game in McCall had approached the author to come up with automated systems to detect and record the echolocation calls used by bats in a portion of Hells Canyon. The goals included being able to monitor a remote cave with one system and then be able to perform mobile monitoring via vehicles with another system. This synopsis details the design and deployment of the two monitoring systems that were used to meet these objectives. A stationary (passive) system deployed at Redfish Cave used the Wildlife Acoustics SM2BAT+ Songmeter hooked to an external microphone that was powered by a solar panel/rechargeable battery setup. The other mobile system used the ANABAT SD2 recorder hooked to a rooftop-mounted antenna that was linked to an HP iPAQ PDA/GPS for data display and echolocation call storage. The passive system was initially deployed on Feb 14, 2014, and recorded bat activity inside the cave every night afterward through the last time it was checked and the data downloaded on March 24, 2014. At that time, it was left set up to continue to record on subsequent evenings. A total of 9 bat calls were recorded during the ~6-week interval. The mobile system was implemented on the evening of March 24, 2014, for one hour and recorded 72 bat calls on the main Hells Canyon Road between Big Bar and MP18. It was then left to record bats for the remainder of the evening until the next morning as a further test, which resulted in 36 additional calls being recorded. Bat activity was quite pronounced during this evening with 4 species groups being documented.

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ELECTRONIC FILE - Zoology: Mammals

NOTE that additional information associated with this report can be found at N14PET01IDUS.