The boreal forest is the largest intact forest in the world, and a refuge for species experiencing range retractions as a consequence of climate and landscape change. Yet, large tracts of the boreal forest are threatened by the cumulative impacts of climate change, natural resource extraction, agriculture, and urbanization, perhaps warranting a shift in focus from biodiversity conservation in intact wilderness to that in anthropologically modified landscapes. We investigated landscape features that influence the distribution of the endangered little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus) in an urbanizing boreal landscape at two spatial scales. We hypothesized that little brown bat activity would be influenced by proximity to available building roosts, because roosts are a potential limiting factor for boreal bats. Secondarily, we predicted that bats would use potential foraging habitat, such as waterbodies, and would avoid young, cluttered forests at the landscape scale. We conducted acoustic surveys of bat activity at 210 sites distributed across the study area in Yukon, Canada, within 1‐km grid cells. We tested a priori hypotheses with a set of candidate regression models, accounting for spatial autocorrelation. Our hypothesis about the relative importance of anthropogenic roosts was not supported. Little brown bats were equally active in urban areas (high building density) and rural areas (low building density), perhaps because roosts were adequately available throughout the region. Instead, habitat use was driven by the distribution of potential foraging habitat, particularly waterbodies, which are important sources of aerial insect prey. Little brown bats also avoided young (≤100‐yr‐old) forest at the landscape scale (including areas regenerating after fire), which may have been poor foraging or roosting habitat, and used areas with a smaller agricultural and industrial footprint. Our results suggest that waterbodies and mature forest are important little brown bat habitats that should be protected from urban encroachment. Proactive conservation of important habitat for species at risk is still possible throughout much of the boreal forest, where human densities are comparatively low and the urban footprint is currently small.

中文翻译：

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觅食栖息地驱使濒临灭绝的蝙蝠在城市化的北方景观中分布

北方森林是世界上最大的完整森林，并且是由于气候和景观变化而遭受范围缩小的物种的避难所。然而，气候变化，自然资源开采，农业和城市化的累积影响使大片的北方森林受到威胁，这也许可以保证将重点从完整的荒野中的生物多样性保护转移到人类学上经过修改的景观中。我们调查了影响濒临灭绝的小棕蝙蝠（Myotis lucifugus）在两个空间尺度上的城市化北方景观中。我们假设几乎没有棕色蝙蝠活动会受到与可用建筑物栖息地的接近程度的影响，因为栖息地是北方蝙蝠的潜在限制因素。其次，我们预测蝙蝠将利用潜在的觅食栖息地（例如水体），并避免在景观规模上生长年轻，混乱的森林。我们对分布在加拿大育空地区研究区域内1公里网格内210个地点的蝙蝠活动进行了声学调查。我们使用一组候选回归模型（考虑了空间自相关）测试了先验假设。我们关于人为栖息地的相对重要性的假设没有得到支持。小棕蝙蝠在城市地区（建筑密度高）和农村地区（建筑密度低）中同样活跃，也许是因为整个区域都有足够的栖息地。取而代之的是，栖息地的利用是由潜在觅食栖息地（尤其是水生生物）的分布所驱动的，水生生物是空中昆虫猎物的重要来源。小棕蝙蝠还避开了景观规模上的年轻（≤100岁）森林（包括大火后再生的区域），这些森林可能是觅食或栖息地差的地方，而农业和工业足迹较小的使用过的地区。我们的研究结果表明，水体和成熟的森林是重要的小棕蝙蝠栖息地，应避免受到城市侵蚀。在大多数人口稀少的北方森林中，仍然可以积极保护重要物种的生境，因为北方森林的人口密度相对较低，而城市占地面积目前很小。