Atlas der Säugetiere Nordrhein-Westfalens

Breitflügelfledermaus

2421 entries

Serotine bat

Rote Liste NRW: 2 Stark gefährdet

  entry

Eptesicus serotinus

With a head and body length of 8 cm, the Serotine Bat counts among the large native bat species. This is a commensal species and occupies roosts in attics or behind sidings. In subterranean hibernacula, the animals appear only after longer periods of frost and only individually.
The main distribution of the species in NRW lies in the more remotes regions of Westphalia and the Lower Rhenian Bay. In contrast, the Cologne Bay is barely occupied. Serotine Bats preferably hunt in cities, in areas with open residential build-up and residential gardens. However, in the countryside, meadows and grasslands are the preferred hunting habitat where they capture mostly flies and beetles. Formerly, the Serotine Bat could also be observed hunting over open garbage dumps — a feeding habitat that is barely available today.
A threat to the Serotine Bat is the intensified agriculture with its progressively decreasing, mixed grazing stock farming. No insects fly above intensively fertilized and frequently mowed silage meadows, which could be used as a food source. But also above grazed pastures, the variety of food has now strongly declined because the pasture animals are prophylactically treated with such high doses of drugs that insects can no longer develop in their dung. Another risk factor for the species is the current trend of thermal building refurbishment in the process of which roosts of this and other bat species are often unknowingly destroyed.

Author

Holger Meinig

Citation

Meinig H (2024): Breitflügelfledermaus (Eptesicus_serotinus).In: AG Säugetierkunde NRW — Online-Atlas of the mammals of North Rhine-Westphalia. Downloaded from saeugeratlas-nrw.lwl.org on 2024/11/21