Climate change poses major threats to biological communities and the ecosystem services they provide. Bats are sensitive to human-driven habitat alteration, and changes in temperature and water availability induced by climate change may affect their eco-physiology, distribution and ultimately survival. Climate change is therefore likely to influence European bat populations and affect insect consumption by bats in farmland, forests and urban areas, implying serious consequences for the conservation of European biodiversity as well as economy. However, little scientific work has addressed this issue, so we lack the knowledge to devise mitigation strategies. COST Action CA18107 set out to fill this gap.
One of the tasks in the project is to define, predict and quantify the effects of climate change on bats across Europe (WG1), establishing how bats react to different climatic conditions, assessing the current magnitude of this impact, forecasting its future effects, and establishing the roles played by life history traits and environmental factors. In order to do this, traits of European bat species were collected from (grey) literature and datasets. These data can downloaded and browsed in a Shiny app, at https://jasja.shinyapps.io/ClimBats/ The code for the app and the underlaying data is placed in this repository.
The data is described in Froidevaux et al, in press. A species-level trait dataset of bats in Europe and beyond.
COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) is a funding agency for research and innovation networks. Our Actions help connect research initiatives across Europe and enable scientists to grow their ideas by sharing them with their peers. This boosts their research, career and innovation. More information on COST can be found at www.cost.eu