Figure 1.
Location of Poland in Europe (top right), study area (70 caves) in the southern part of the country (middle), and location of surveyed caves in the Tatra Mts. (bottom).
The size of circles represents the sample size.
Figure 2.
Variability of four abiotic characteristics of 30 caves in the Polish Carpathians used by bats for wintering as a function of elevation fitted with splines (solid lines).
The four groups of bats obtained by cluster analysis (see Figure 6) are presented with different colours.
Figure 3.
Distribution pattern of bats wintering in caves in the Polish Carpathians along the elevation gradient expressed with kernel density estimators and boxplots.
Total abundance of each species is given below its abbreviated name: Mema – Myotis emarginatus, Rhip – Rhinolophus hipposideros, Mbra – M. brandtii, Mmyo – M. myotis, Eser – Eptesicus serotinus, Mbech – M. bechsteinii, Mnat – M. nattereri, Mdau – M. daubentonii, Paur – Plecotus auritus, Mmys s.l. – M. mystacinus sensu lato, Enil – E. nilssonii, Mmys s.s. – M. mystacinus sensu stricto, Malc – M. alcathoe, Bbar – Barbastella barbastellus, Mdas – M. dasycneme, Paus – P. austriacus.
Table 1.
Number of hibernating bats in caves in the Polish Carpathians.
Figure 4.
Spline fit (solid line) with 95% confidence interval (dashed lines) of the variability in the species richness of bat assemblages wintering in 70 caves in the Polish Carpathians as a function of elevation (GAM: species richness∼intercept+s(elevation)).
In the inner subplot empirical (solid line and black squares, number of recorded species on each 100-m vertical bands) and interpolated (dashed line and open circles, species was recorded at range between the highest and the lowest records) species richness are presented.
Figure 5.
Spline fits (solid lines) with 95% confidence intervals (dashed lines) of the variability in species richness and abundance of bats wintering in 30 caves in the Polish Carpathians as a function of elevation, average temperature, amplitude of temperature, humidity, type of cave and type of vegetation (GAMM: species richness/abundance∼intercept+s(elevation)+s(average temperature)+s(amplitude of temperature)+s(humidity)+type of cave+vegetation+random(season)).
In both models the season was included as a random categorical factor.
Table 2.
Summary of generalised additive mixed models (GAMM) explaining the number of bat individuals and the number of bat species in 30 caves in the Polish Carpathians between 2003 and 2009 on the basis of microclimate (average temperature, its amplitude and humidity), elevation and type of cave (karstic vs non-karstic) and vegetation type (deciduous forest, mixed forest, coniferous forest, open).
Figure 6.
Cluster analysis of bat assemblages wintering in 33 caves in the Polish Carpathians.
Four groups were distinguished and marked in different colours; the altitudinal position of openings of caves is projected on the slope and expressed with a boxplot. Four main vegetation zones are drawn on the left slope.
Figure 7.
Expected cumulative number of bat species as a function of sampling effort: number of sampled individuals (upper panel) and number of caves controlled in one season (lower panel).