As a USFWS Fellow, I worked with Caribbean Landscape Conservation Cooperative (CLCC) staff, USFWS Ecological Services (ES) staff, US Forest Service to (1) develop and implement an acoustic monitoring network to assess native bat habitat use in Puerto Rico and (2) assist in creating an acoustic database structure the existing CLCC web –based data portal to form a base for developing a wider acoustic monitoring program. For the first objective, we were interested in developing a sampling design to assess the potential impacts of habitat variables and habitat disturbance on bat populations and activity. We also posited that the data would be useful for managers of proposed wind farms. This route will help inform permitting for PRDNER and the ES-office and will eventually contribute to the future landscape planning activities of the CLCC. Another subcomponent of objective one might be to later assess changes in bat abundance and community structure across environmental gradients with emphasis on land use (urban-agricultural-forested), elevation, temperature, and precipitation gradients across the island. These data will be used in concert with our CLCC downscaled climate products to inform future land use planning. Finally, part of the CLCC mission is to inform agricultural and forestry decisions in light of predicted climate and land use changes, gaining a better understanding of bats as insect predators, pollinators, and tree seed dispersers and how their activity may change with the changing climate and sea level rise. In all cases data obtained over the Fellows residency will serve as training data in the development of web-based spatially-explicit data layers. We would expect the Fellow to assist in designing the database to facilitate effective and appropriate use.
