Bats (Chiroptera: Vespertilionidae) of the Great 

 Dismal Swamp of Virginia and North Carolina 



Thomas M. Padgett 1 and Robert K. Rose 



Department of Biological Sciences 



Old Dominion University 



Norfolk, Virginia 23529-0266 



ABSTRACT— From autumn 1983 through spring 1986, bats were 

 collected in the Dismal Swamp, a forested wetland located in south- 

 eastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina. Before this survey, 

 only five species of bats were known from the Dismal Swamp, all first 

 collected during the 1890s. A total of 89 specimens representing five 

 genera and seven species were collected, including 50 red bats, Lasiurus 

 borealis. Four species are new records for the Dismal Swamp, and the 

 one specimen of Seminole bat, Lasiurus seminolus, represents a first 

 record for Virginia. During winter, the population of red bats consisted 

 entirely of males, which were active at ambient temperatures > 10° C. 

 Five species of bats are considered permanent residents; two of these 

 were active throughout the year and the others hibernated during the 

 winter months. 



Five species of bats from the vicinity of Lake Drummond (Table 1) 

 were collected between 1895 and 1898 by A. K. Fisher and William 

 Palmer, of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Biological 

 Surveys, during a survey of the Great Dismal Swamp, an 80,000-ha 

 forested wetland on the coastal plain of Virginia and North Carolina. 

 The first records of bats from the region (although not from the Dismal 

 Swamp proper) had been made between 1891 and 1894 by the Smithwick 

 brothers in the Albemarle Sound area of Bertie Co., N.C. (Brimley 

 1897). 



Since the 1890s, no systematic attempt had been made to study bats 

 in the vicinity of the Dismal Swamp. Handley (1979a), after an 

 exhaustive review of the literature, compiled a short account of the 

 species of bats believed to occur in the Dismal Swamp forests (Table 1). 

 He attributed 10 species of bats to the Dismal Swamp, but only five 

 species had been collected there; the remainder were collected near 

 Albemarle Sound by the Smithwicks or in other areas adjacent to the 

 Dismal Swamp. The four records from the twentieth century include 

 three specimens from the Dismal Swamp: one Keen's myotis, Myotis 

 keenii Merriam, in 1930, and two eastern pipistrelles, Pipistrellus 

 subflavus F. Cuvier, in 1905 and 1964 (Handley 1979a); the fourth is a 



Present address: N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, P.O. Box 2632, 

 Elizabethtown, NC 28337. 



Brimleyana 17:17-25, December 1991 17 



