O’SHEA, CRYAN & BOGAN: UNITED STATES BAT SPECIES OF CONCERN 
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Barclay, 2003). Foraging activity (as measured by echolocation detectors) in forests of southwest¬ 
ern British Columbia was positively associated with habitat type, forest stand age, and ambient 
temperature (Luszcz and Barclay, 2016). Black cottonwood (Populus trichocarpa ) and coastal 
western hemlock forests had greater activity of this species than Douglas fir and Engelmann 
spruce-subalpine fir zones in the British Columbia study, with activity higher in old and mature- 
age forests than in young forests and higher in warmer temperatures; activity also differed between 
the two years of study with no obvious causal relationships (Luszcz and Barclay, 2016). 
Long-eared myotis were long suspected to include gleaning in their mode of foraging (Man¬ 
ning and Jones, 1989), and in captivity often hovered and gleaned prey from surfaces (Barclay, 
1991). They have been described as having a flexible foraging strategy (Barclay, 1991). Experi¬ 
mental studies indicated that they relied on prey-generated sounds much more than they used 
echolocation for detecting and attacking insects while gleaning. In contrast, they consistently used 
echolocation when aerial hawking, and physical characteristics of echolocation sounds varied 
between the two hunting strategies (Faure et al., 1990; Faure and Barclay, 1992, 1994). 
In several forest types in northern Idaho long-eared myotis have been reported to have the 
most diverse diet of the five species of bats studied, primarily eating moths but also consuming 
insects in nine other orders as well as spiders and ticks (Lacki et al., 2007). These bats were cate¬ 
gorized as beetle strategists and between, within, and below-canopy foragers based on dietary 
analysis of bats sampled in the San Mateo Mountains of New Mexico (Black, 1974). However, in 
lodgepole pine forest of Alberta they ate primarily lepidopterans, and to a lesser degree also 
consumed hymenopterans, neuropterans, and dipterans (Barclay, 1991). Dietary analysis and skull 
and jaw morphology indicate that this species may rely more on beetles than moths in areas where 
they overlap in habitat with the southwestern myotis {Myotis auriculus ), thought to be a greater 
specialist on moths (Husar, 1976; Gannon and Racz, 2006). 
Lepidopterans were the most prominent food item observed in guano of long-eared myotis 
captured at riparian habitats in the Oregon Coast Range, followed by spiders, coleopterans, 
hemipterans, and other groups (Ober and Hayes, 2008). In northeastern Oregon, they were report¬ 
ed to eat primarily lepidopterans followed by coleopterans (Whitaker et al., 1981). Lepidopterans 
and coleopterans were the most often encountered groups seen in dietary analysis of fecal samples 
from northern Arizona ponderosa pine forest, where homopterans were also taken opportunistical¬ 
ly (Warner, 1985). In mountains of northern New Mexico, individuals fed on lepidopterans and 
beetles but consumed mainly beetles at sites where it was sympatric with the morphologically sim¬ 
ilar southwestern myotis (Husar, 1976). Dietary analysis of stomach contents from northwestern 
Colorado indicated that coleopterans, trichopterans, and hymenopterans were equal dietary com¬ 
ponents, followed by lepidopterans in percentage frequency, with other groups of insects each con¬ 
stituting less than 10% (Armstrong et al., 1994). In Douglas fir forests of southern British Colum¬ 
bia, the diet was primarily coleopterans, followed by neuropterans in descending order of percent 
volume, with lesser amounts of other groups, including caterpillars taken during a spruce budworm 
(Choristoneura occidentalis) outbreak (Wilson and Barclay, 2006). Stomach contents of three indi¬ 
viduals from southeastern Montana contained homopterans (cicadellids), dipterans, lepidopterans, 
odonates, and coleopterans (Jones et al., 1973). 
Long-eared myotis were among the species group sampled by Adams et al. (2003) that more 
frequently drank at watering places with higher concentrations of calcium and other minerals, per¬ 
haps providing a supplement to dietary intake that would be most critical to reproductive females 
and weaned volant juveniles. 
Roosting Habits. — Long-eared myotis roost near the ground during warm seasons, using 
rock crevices, snags, logs, stumps, and living trees. They occupy roosts in very small groups or 
solitarily, switching among many roosts at a nearly daily frequency. Studies using radio telemetry 
