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Conspecific and heterospecific social groups affect each other's resource use: a study on roost sharing among bat colonies
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International audience. Sharing resources with conspecifics or heterospecifics can involve costs like increased competition or higher pathogen infection risks as well as benefits such as information on the location, quality and availability of resources. Depending on the consequences of sharing resources, the responses of individuals towards resources used by conspecifics and heterospecifics can range from ignoring them through avoidance to attraction. Within bats it is well known that colony members share information about day roosts and roost switching is often coordinated within the colony. However, little is known about roosting interactions between distinct colonies of conspecifics or heterospecifics. In this study, we investigated roosting interactions between five co-occurring bat colonies that belong to three forest-living species (Myotis bechsteinii, Myotis nattereri, Plecotus auritus). Occupied roosts were continuously monitored with an automatic RFID system over three maternity seasons. Furthermore, we used simulations to test whether colonies preferentially occupied recently used roosts of other colonies. We found no evidence that the roosting behaviour of the M. bechsteinii colony was influenced by the co-occurring heterospecific colonies. In contrast, P. auritus and M. nattereri frequently explored roosts of conspecific and heterospecific colonies, respectively. Nevertheless, with largely separated roosting ranges, the three P. auritus colonies avoided occupying roosts that had been inhabited by conspecific colonies. In contrast, M. nattereri specifically occupied recent roosts of all three P. auritus colonies. Our results give evidence that co-occurring colonies of conspecific and heterospecific bats can influence each other's roost usage. Our findings have implications for both our understanding of inter-and intraspecific resource sharing among distinct social groups and the management of forest-living bats that are of conservation concern.
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