Semi‐arid and arid landscapes (dry‐lands) cover 41% of the Earth’s land surface over five continents. These areas are home to 55% of mammal species. Bats have the second highest species richness among mammals, and, although many species are adapted to arid conditions, they are particularly sensitive in these habitats and require conservation priority. Information on bats in arid and semi‐arid landscapes is scattered, patchy and focused on small‐scale studies; therefore, we undertook a systematic review using the PRISMA protocol to identify the current knowledge status, detect knowledge gaps and propose future research priorities. We analysed 346 published articles and evaluated 40 topics within five topic categories (taxa studied, methodologies used, biology, ecology and conservation). The most commonly studied topic categories were ecology and biology. However, we found a gap in the topic category conservation (including topics such as conservation status and roost conservation). Our network analysis of topics within the categories showed that most ecology papers were focused on distribution, species richness and habitat use. When we analysed keywords, we found that phylogeny, taxonomy and distribution demonstrated relatively high presence. Moreover, comparison of the percentage of studies conducted in dry‐lands and the percentage of land surface area covered by dry‐lands in the continents revealed that dry‐lands in Africa and Australia were especially under‐represented. Our review shows that knowledge of bats in semi‐arid and arid landscapes is biased towards new records of the distribution of species, as well as covering systematic/taxonomic and morphological aspects of bat biology. We suggest that research on conservation measures and guidelines to protect the bat species found in semi‐arid and arid landscapes should be prioritised, together with the sharing of knowledge with local practitioners and the development of citizen science programmes.

中文翻译：

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半干旱和干旱景观中的蝙蝠生态学和保护：全球系统评价

半干旱和干旱景观（旱地）覆盖了五大洲 41% 的地球陆地表面。这些地区拥有 55% 的哺乳动物物种。蝙蝠在哺乳动物中拥有第二高的物种丰富度，尽管许多物种适应了干旱条件，但它们在这些栖息地中特别敏感，需要优先保护。关于干旱和半干旱地区蝙蝠的信息是分散的、零散的，并且侧重于小规模的研究；因此，我们使用 PRISMA 协议进行了系统审查，以确定当前的知识状态、检测知识差距并提出未来的研究重点。我们分析了 346 篇已发表的文章并评估了五个主题类别（研究的类群、使用的方法、生物学、生态学和保护）中的 40 个主题。最常研究的主题类别是生态学和生物学。但是，我们发现主题类别保护（包括保护状态和栖息地保护等主题）存在差距。我们对类别内主题的网络分析表明，大多数生态学论文都集中在分布、物种丰富度和栖息地利用上。当我们分析关键词时，我们发现系统发育、分类和分布表现出相对较高的存在。此外，将旱地研究的百分比与大陆旱地覆盖的陆地表面积百分比进行比较，发现非洲和澳大利亚的旱地代表性特别不足。我们的审查表明，关于半干旱和干旱地区蝙蝠的知识偏向于物种分布的新记录，以及涵盖蝙蝠生物学的系统/分类学和形态学方面。我们建议优先研究保护在半干旱和干旱地区发现的蝙蝠物种的保护措施和指南，同时与当地从业者分享知识和制定公民科学计划。