The Vertebrate Group, when studying biodiversity, focussed mainly on taxocoenoses and guilds of bats and small terrestrial mammals. Both standard methods of field research, such as sampling of small mammals by various traps, visual monitoring of bats within their hibernacula, mist netting or observation of bats leaving their summer shelters, and more sophisticated methods (infrared automatic collectors or ultrasound detectors to monitor bats' flight and foraging activity) were used.
Major outputs of the research programme include:
- Long-term monitoring of bats in selected underground hibernacula on the territory of the Czech Republic. Results of this monitoring were published and fluctuations in numbers of individual bat species were analysed.
- The study of "couples", i.e. two genetically close and mutually resembling species of bats, with similar morphology and ecology. The problems included the diet and nutritional preferences of bats as revealed from analyses of their droppings (Eptesicus serotinus and E. nilssonii), the correlation of parameters of flight activity such as the departures from and returns to summer shelters (Pipistrellus pipistrellus and P. pygmaeus), and the testing of possibilities to determine hibernating individuals without handling them during the standard winter monitoring (Myotis mystacinus and M. brandtii).
- Long-term summer monitoring of bats in floodplain forests of relatively large Moravian rivers Odra and Morava (Litovelské Pomoraví, middle Morava) and the forests on the Morava-Dyje confluence at the Czech, Slovak and Austrian border. The distribution of bats and their ecology within these territories were analysed not leaving out the winter records when available.
- Another summer monitoring of bat populations in highlands of the Vsetín District and ®ďárské Vrchy Protected Landscape Area.
- Comparative studies of echolocation in Pipistrellus pipistrellus and P. pygmaeus. The reliability of acoustic identification of P. pygmaeus in various habitats was tested.
- In summer, comparative study of bat activity and foraging behaviour in floodplain forests and intravillans. In both summer and winter, monitoring of bat activity, including the swarming behaviour, at the entrances to important hibernacula (caves).
- The research of anti-predation strategies and impact of predation on bats. These studies were performed in natural and semi-natural conditions using various methods such as the following of bats' emergence in presence/absence of a simulated predator, clustering behaviour of bats leaving their roost or analysis of owl pellets with bat remnants.
- The changes in various parameters of echolocation signals of bats flying in monospecific and species-mixed groups, when compared with individually flying bats. This research was performed under laboratory conditions.
- Radiotelemetry of Myotis myotis on the territory of the Moravian Karst and its surroundings. This research included mapping of all breeding colonies of the species within the territory and following the movements of radio-tagged individuals between their summer roosts and foraging grounds, between and among the summer roosts and the movements from summer roosts to hibernacula.
- The assessment of species diversity and population numbers of small terrestrial mammals (rodents and insectivores) in various floodplain habitats, mainly within protected landscape areas (Litovelské Pomoraví, Poodří, Dolní Morava Biosphere Reserve), and their comparison. Monitoring of small terrestrial mammals on the ridge of the Orlické Hory Mts. which has been carried out for more than thirty years.
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