Modeling Survival Rates of Hibernating Mammals with Individual-Based Models of Energy Expenditure

(Uploaded by Plazi for the Bat Literature Project) Estimating survival rates of naturally hibernating mammals is important for ecological and conservation reasons, but empirical estimates are logistically difficult to obtain. Individual-based models can estimate survival under circumstances that would be impossible or unethical to test experimentally. Here, we present an individual-based model based on energy expenditure to estimate survival rates of hibernating little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus). Initial simulations assumed only thermal energetics of individuals were important to energy expenditure; subsequent simulations assumed bats also use a behavioral mechanism (clustering) to reduce energy expenditure during euthermy. Our model suggests that survival rates are high (.0.96) for populations that cluster during hibernation and experience no human disturbance, regardless of winter length (between 90 and 200 d). Survival rates are much lower, especially at long winter lengths (0.73 6 0.01 SD at 200 d), if bats do not cluster. Human disturbances strongly affect survival rates, but the relationship is not linear. Survival rates are not lowered substantially by a limited number of disturbances because those arousals would have occurred naturally, but as disturbances reach a frequency threshold (dependent on winter length and disturbance pattern) they become very detrimental to survival. Thus, our model has implications for understanding the effect of environmental variability, social thermoregulation, and human disturbance on mammals hibernating under natural conditions.