Extraordinary range expansion in a common bat: the potential roles of climate change and urbanisation

L. Ancillotto, L. Santini, N. Ranc, L. Maiorano, D. Russo

Urbanisation and climate change are two global change processes that affect animal distributions, posing critical threats to biodiversity. Due to its versatile ecology and synurbic habits, Kuhl's pipistrelle (Pipistrellus kuhlii) offers a unique opportunity to explore the relative effects of climate change and urbanisation on species distributions. In a climate change scenario, this typically Mediterranean species is expected to expand its range in response to increasing temperatures. We collected 25,132 high-resolution occurrence records from P. kuhlii European range between 1980 and 2013 and modelled the species' distribution with a multi-temporal approach, using three bioclimatic variables and one proxy of urbanisation. Temperature in the coldest quarter of the year was the most important factor predicting the presence of P. kuhlii and showed an increasing trend in the study period; mean annual precipitation and precipitation seasonality were also relevant, but to a lower extent. Although urbanisation increased in recently colonised areas, it had little effect on the species' presence predictability. P. kuhlii expanded its geographical range by about 394 % in the last four decades, a process that can be interpreted as a response to climate change.