Relatedness within and among Myotis septentrionalis colonies at a local scale

We assessed parentage within and among maternity colonies of northern long-eared bats (Myotis septentrionalis Troessart 1897) in north-central Kentucky from 2011â 2013 to examine colony social structure, formation, and membership dynamics. We intensively sampled colonies in close and remote (> 10 km) proximity before and after targeted day-roost removal. Colonies were not necessarily comprised of closely related individuals, although natal philopatry was common. Adjacent colonies often contained maternally-related individuals, indicating that some pups did disperse, albeit not far from their natal home-range. Whereas some young had been sired by males also collected on site, most had not, as would be expected since the species mates in fall near hibernacula across a wider landscape. The number of parentages that we inferred among colonies, however, suggests that outside the maternity season, social groups may be relatively flexible and open. Analysis of microsatellite DNA data showed a low FST (= 0.011) and best fit to a model of one multilocus genotypic cluster across the study area. We observed high turnover in colony membership between years in all colonies, regardless of roost removal treatment. Our results suggest that female northern long-eared bats exhibit fidelity to a general geographic area and complex, dynamic social-genetic structure.The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author