Smartphones as a Non-Invasive Surveying Tool to Monitor Bats

Abstract

ic calls emitted while foraging for insects (Fenton and Simmons, 2014). As each species has distinct echolocation call morphologies, identification of these calls can be accomplished via standard acoustic monitoring technology and software. Previously, this has been expensive ( > $5,000 USD), therefore most citizen scientists would have limited access this technology. In addition, handling of bats for species identification requires permitting by local state and federal agencies, as well as any handler to possess current rabies vaccinations. Bats are capable of inhabiting a variety of roosting sites in both natural and manmade structures (Kunz and Lumsden, 2003). However, many communities and state parks typically improve available roosting habitats for bats by deploying multi-chambered bat boxes, to create artificial roosting habitats that bats may occupy throughout the year (Tuttle et al., 2013). Occupancy of these bat boxes can be affected by canopy cover, box design, level of human disturbance, and adequate solar exposure (White, 2004, Rueegger et al., 2018). Moreover, not all species are likely to use bat boxes at equal frequencies (Griffiths et al., 2017). However, little attention has been given to more recent methods for either more affordable bat species identification or monitoring of deployed bat boxes using non-invasive smartphone technology. These technologies can help increase the amount of available data on bat species presence and habitat use in urban environments. Smartphones have become increasingly utilized for data collection in environmental sciences by both citizen scientists and researchers (Gutowsky et al., 2013, Frigerio et al., 2018, Stitt et al., 2019), for the identification of flora and fauna incorporating geographic location and pattern recognition applications such as iNaturalist (Nugent, 2018). Several smartphone-based research devices have recently become Smartphones as a Non-Invasive Surveying Tool to Monitor Bats