A Phenological Study of Bat Communities in Southern Mississippi C

The University of Southern Mississippi The Aquila Digital Community Master's Theses Fall 12-2014 A Phenological Study of Bat Communities in Southern Mississippi Caves Zachary Uriah Roth University of Southern Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://aquila.usm.edu/masters_theses Part of the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Commons Recommended Citation Roth, Zachary Uriah, "A Phenological Study of Bat Communities in Southern Mississippi Caves" (2014) Master's Theses 62 https://aquila.usm.edu/masters_theses/62 This Masters Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by The Aquila Digital Community It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of The Aquila Digital Community For more information, please contact Joshua.Cromwell@usm.edu The University of Southern Mississippi A PHENOLOGICAL STUDY OF BAT COMMUNITIES IN SOUTHERN MISSISSIPPI CAVES by Zachary Uriah Roth A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate School of The University of Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science Approved: Dr David Beckett _ Committee Chair Dr Frank Moore Dr Carl Quarls _ Dr Karen Coats Dean of the Graduate School December 2014 ABSTRACT A PHENOLOGICAL STUDY OF BAT COMMUNITIES IN SOUTHERN MISSISSIPPI CAVES by Zachary Uriah Roth December 2014 Mississippi is generally not known for its caves, and consequently its cave flora and fauna remain largely unstudied From fall 2010 to winter 2013, we studied the bat populations in the three largest caves in Mississippi The most common (and only) species found in these caves were Myotis austroriparius and Perimyotis subflavus I collected monthly data on the number of bats per species, behaviors and locations of the bats within the caves, as well as atmospheric data at selected positions within each cave All three caves were found to have significant temperature differences between seasons (winter