Spring Movement and Foraging Range of the Ozark Big-eared Bat

D. Blake Sasse^1,*, Pedro Ardapple-Kindberg², and Jaclyn S. Reifeiss³

¹Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, 213A Highway 89 South, Mayflower 72106.²US Fish and Wildlife Service, Arkansas Ecological Services Field Office, 110 S Amity Road, Ste 300, Conway, AR 72032.³201 Donaghey Avenue, Conway, AR 72035. *Corresponding author.

Southeastern Naturalist, Volume 25, Issue 2 (2026): 186–190

First published early online: 4 May 2026

Abstract
The endangered Corynorhinus townsendii ingens (Ozark Big-eared Bat) generally moves from caves used during winter hibernation to different caves used by females as summer maternity colony sites. However, for some colonies, only the cave used by the maternity colony or only the cave used as the hibernaculum, but not both, are known. On 19 March 2024, we placed radiotransmitters on 3 female Ozark Big-eared Bats captured in a hibernaculum in Washington County, AR. We tracked nighttime movements using aerial radiotelemetry through 2 April 2024 in an attempt to locate the maternity colony site associated with this hibernaculum. We tracked 2 individuals to caves located 9.7 km southeast and 11.6 km northwest, respectively, of the hibernaculum. We relocated the other bat at a known maternity colony cave 20.1 km west of the hibernaculum. There were sufficient data from 1 bat to estimate a foraging-range size of 104.3 km2 using an autocorrelated kernel density estimate and 52 km2 using a minimal convex polygon. Whereas this study documented a distance between hibernaculum and maternity colony that was 3 times greater than seen in previous work, it is apparent that the Ozark Big-eared Bat is a sedentary rather than a true migratory species.

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