RESUMEN
Background: Bats are of high conservational status in most European countries. All bats are under legal protection in Ukraine and included in the national Red Data Book. However, bats remain one of the least studied groups of mammals in Ukraine. Their cryptic lifestyle limits the possibilities of direct observations and, as a result, data on bat distribution are incomplete. Wildlife rehabilitation centres accumulate a plethora of records of wild animals and those data may significantly contribute to knowledge on the species range, phenology and habitat preferences.This paper presents the data accumulated from over a decade of work by the Ukrainian Bat Rehabilitation Center (formerly The Bat Rehabilitation Center of Feldman Ecopark), the premier organisation engaged in the rescue and rehabilitation of bats across Ukraine. In addition to in-person data collected by Ukrainian Bat Rehabilitation Center staff, the Center also accepts observations of bat encounters from citizens. The Center's dataset boasts over 20,000 distinct observations, which are the subject of this paper. New information: This dataset, spanning 2011-2022, contains a total of 20,948 records of bat findings, 19,024 of which consist of records directly identified by UBRC team members. The remaining 1924 observations were provided by citizens through helpline. Data on 16 species and one subspecies have been collected. The highest number of records belongs to Nyctalusnoctula (n = 15889), followed by Eptesicusserotinus (n = 2017) and Pipistrelluskuhliilepidus (n = 2001). Less than 10% of these records have been previously published; the rest are presented in this paper for the first time. The dataset is particularly rich in information on bats in human settlements and is (to the best of the authors' knowledge) the largest dataset on bats within human-modified landscapes ever collected from the territory of Eastern Europe. The entire dataset is available through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF).
RESUMEN
Copulatory behaviours stand as cornerstones of sexual selection, yet they remain mysterious in many species. Because of their nocturnal and elusive lifestyle, the copulatory behaviours of bats have been mostly overlooked1. Several aspects of bat reproduction differ from other mammals (e.g. prolonged sperm storage2, delayed development3). Here, we show that in serotine bats (Eptesicus serotinus) the penis is used as a 'copulatory arm' rather than an intromittent organ, revealing a novel copulatory behaviour in mammals.