Guardians of the Mayan temples

The woolly false- vampire bat, Chrotopterus auritus, is a large carnivorous bat with a wide distribution in the Americas. Besides roosting in hollow trees and caves, this bat makes use of Mayan archaeological sites in the Yucatan Peninsula, where it is threatened. Understanding the microclimatic conditions that allow this species to exploit these roosts is important in the face of increasing anthropogenic change in the region, such as land development and tourist accommodations in archaeological sites, which could threaten their suitability. We used temperature and relative humidity data loggers to record the internal temperature and relative humidity and external temperature of three Mayan temple roosts in Calakmul, Campeche, expecting internal conditions to be, on average, close to the reported thermoneutral zone of the species (~27-34 °C). We recorded 54,7 days of temperature data and 42,5 days of relative humidity data in four different months of the year. The yearly average internal temperature of the roosts was 24,6 °C (SD=2,03), while yearly average internal relative humidity was 79,4 % (SD=8,3), with significant differences between roosts and between sampling months. Chrotopterus auritus tolerates energetically suboptimal conditions, potentially prioritising other factors in its selection of roosts.