6 
PROCEEDINGS OF THE CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 
Series 4, Volume 65, Supplement I 
sumers of insect pests nationwide, as pollinators of plants in the southwestern states, and as dis¬ 
persers of seeds in the tropical territories (for example, Boyles et al., 2011; Fenton and Simmons, 
2015; Maine and Boyles, 2015; Wiederholt et al., 2013). Forty-seven species of bats are found in 
the 50 United States (Bradley et al., 2014; excluding rare and anomalous occurrences), with other 
species found in the U.S. territories. Within the 50 U.S. states, eight taxa (including subspecies of 
big-eared bats) are threatened or endangered (Table 2), which together with 18 species of concern 
within the states encompass more than half of all U.S. species of bats exclusive of the territories. 
The need for conservation and research efforts for bats has been underscored over the past 10 
years by the emergence of two major, unforeseen threats acting on U.S. bat mortality: the growth 
in the wind energy industry causing increases in bat deaths at operating turbines, and the emergence 
of white-nose syndrome, the fungal disease resulting in massive die-offs at bat hibemacula (for 
example, Frick et al., 2010a; Turner et al., 2011). This mortality is unprecedented globally (O’Shea 
et al., 2016a). These relatively new issues are superimposed on several more long-standing chron¬ 
ic problems that have confronted U.S. bat populations for decades. 
Objectives, Organization, and Content of This Publication 
This report is targeted for natural resource managers who may have limited knowledge about 
bats and the issues impacting their populations, and for researchers who may be initiating work on 
particular topics or species. The species accounts provide a summary of knowledge about each of 
the 20 former Category 2 candidate species of bats (species of concern), allowing the reader the 
opportunity to identify and consult the many cited references that give further details. This section 
does not provide accounts for species or subspecies that are currently listed as endangered or threat¬ 
ened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act of 1973 (Table 2). Those species are the subjects of 
detailed recovery plans and other documents that can be found elsewhere. 
Each account is divided into sub-sections regarding aspects of the species biology that are fun¬ 
damental for understanding their conservation needs. Our intention in developing these accounts is 
to provide extensive summaries of much of the scientific literature pertinent to the subsection top¬ 
ics as published through much of 2017, but readers should consult the cited original papers for fur¬ 
ther details and to verify our interpretations. 
The species account subsections and the material they are intended to summarize begin with 
the scientific and co mm on names as recognized by Simmons (2005). These are followed by a sum¬ 
mary of Conservation Status information that includes status designations by (1) various nation¬ 
al and international agencies and organizations, and (2) each of the 50 states as well as pertinent 
U.S. territories. A physical Description of the species follows, highlighting unique features and 
possible distinguishing characteristics (if in doubt, readers should consult more definitive sources 
for additional details for identification). The description is followed by a section on Distribution 
and Systematics that provides a description of regions where the species can occur as well as a 
coarse-scale distribution map, and summary information on taxonomy and nomenclature. The dis¬ 
tribution maps of bats were made with publicly available distribution information from the Nation¬ 
al Atlas of the United States (U.S. Geological Survey, 2017). Distributions of all organisms are 
dynamic and imprecisely known. The maps are provided to convey the general range of places a 
species might be encountered during one or more seasons. They are not intended to be precise rep¬ 
resentations of areas where species consistently occur and may not include anomalous records or 
outliers. The information on systematics, taxonomy, and nomenclature is not trivial because the lit¬ 
erature for some of these species includes different scientific names used over the years, and use 
of these names can be confusing even to a specialist; indeed some names may still be in flux, par- 
