In dry Mediterranean forests, ponds constitute essential water resources for animals, especially during summer months. In southeastern Spain, land use changes and the human abandonment of mountainous zones have led to the loss of many ponds. These ponds are scarce landscape elements and, despite their usually small size (< 1,000 m2), they support a considerable amount of biodiversity. We studied the patterns of use of these ponds by bats during the activity season in dry forest landscapes of a Mediterranean region using acoustic monitoring. Our hypothesis was that these ponds are valuable landscape elements for bats, and bat activity and richness species will be high over them. Bat activity and species richness were compared between ponds and adjacent sampling points in the forest matrix. We recorded 14 bat species and our results show that both general bat activity (all species grouped together) and species richness were higher in the ponds than in the forest areas. Bat activity was higher in June, howev...

The Natura 2000 Network represents the greatest step forward yet in conservation in Europe, although its effectiveness is sometimes questioned, especially in Mediterranean regions. Bats are protected by the Habitat Directive and the presence of certain species is a prerequisite before Special Areas Conservation (SAC sites) can be included as such in the Natura 2000 Network. However, the effectiveness of SAC sites as regards the protection they offer to bats, especially cave-dwelling species, remains to be evaluated. We assess the effectiveness of the SAC system for protecting the roosts of six species of cave-dwelling bats and for protecting suitable and optimal habitats, using ecological niche models. Gap analyses indicate that c. 60% of roosts are protected by SAC sites, with values ranging from 45.8% for Miniopterus schreibersii to 72.2% for Rhinolophus hipposideros. The protection offered to suitable and optimal habitats was found to be much lower in general, with values of below 40% in all cases. Our results emphasize the potential value of non-natural caves (e.g. mines and buildings) for the conservation of bat populations, and the importance of assessing the efficiency of protected areas by considering distribution models that incorporate different types of information (e.g. roosts and use habitat) concerning species occurrence.

An understanding of human attitudes towards wildlife can be an essential element in the success or failure of a conservation initiative, policy or practice and represents one of the main conservation problems for wildlife species. Despite the ecosystem services bats provide, they often are a socially stigmatized group, misperceived and even hunted. This problem has been on the increase as a result of the Covid‐19 pandemic. We examined how aesthetic appeal and informational factors could influence human attitudes towards bats in a survey of 1966 participants from Spanish‐speaking countries. Gender, educational level, religiousness and previous experiences with bats were relevant variables to understand attitudes towards them. The results indicate that both aesthetic and informational stimuli increase the positive responses, reducing the negatives on the participants' attitudes. Our results show the importance of public attitudes to achieve conservation goals, especially in the context of human‐wildlife conflict. Bats are not charismatic animals and are still surrounded in mystery; however, our findings could benefit bat conservation plans, allowing the development of new communication strategies both locally and nationally and increasing public acceptance that will facilitate bat conservation.

Climate change is predicted to drive geographical range shifts that will result in changes in species diversity and functional composition and have potential repercussions for ecosystem functioning. However, the effect of these changes on species composition and functional diversity (FD) remains unclear, especially for mammals, specifically bats. We used species distribution models and a comprehensive ecological and morphometrical trait database to estimate how projected future climate and land‐use changes could influence the distribution, composition, and FD of the European bat community. Future bat assemblages were predicted to undergo substantial shifts in geographic range and trait structure. Range suitability decreased substantially in southern Europe and increased in northern latitudes. Our findings highlight the potential for climate change to drive shifts in bat FD, which has implications for ecosystem function and resilience at a continental scale. It is important to incorporate FD in conservation strategies. These efforts should target species with key functional traits predicted to be lost and areas expected to experience losses in FD. Conservation strategies should include habitat and roost protection, enhancing landscape connectivity, and international monitoring to preserve bat populations and their ecosystem services.

The semiarid Mediterranean areas of south-eastern Spain have undergone great economic growth in recent years following the disproportionate expansion of intensive agriculture and housing developments. Such growth can only be supported by the development of large-scale hydraulic engineering works to compensate for the restrictions imposed by the scarcity of autochthonous water resources. We have studied the role of this type of infrastructure in the habitat use of several bat species in a protected forest area and its surroundings, a mixed landscape of traditional and intensive agricultural landscape crossed by the Tagus–Segura water transfer channel and endowed with frequent irrigation ponds. Our results showed that water infrastructures have a positive effect on bat activity (as measured as bat passes and feeding buzzes per unit time) and species richness. The regression models indicate that bat activity is notably higher in the Tagus–Segura channel than in the other habitat types studied. However, this higher activity appears to be mainly due to the presence of the two most common species, Pipistrellus pipistrellus and Pipistrellus pygmaeus, while others, such as the trawling bats Myotis daubentonii and Myotis capaccinii, specialist hunters in this kind of habitat and under greater threat in the study area are much less frequent. The absence of vegetation along the canal and the speed of the current do not seem to favor the presence of these last two species, whose conservation value is much greater than that of the pipistrelles.