Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Landscape and Urban Planning journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/landurbplan Research Paper The importance of ponds for the conservation of bats in urban landscapes L. Ancillotto, L. Bosso, V.B. Salinas-Ramos, D. Russo ⁎ Wildlife Research Unit, Dipartimento di Agraria, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, via Università 100, 80055 Portici, Italy ARTICLEINFO Keywords: Chiroptera Pond Urban biodiversity Urban ecosystem Water site ABSTRACT Ponds have an important role in the ecology of urban areas, as they provide essential habitats to aquatic species, as well as fundamental resources to terrestrial wildlife. Artifcial water sites such as urban ponds provide foraging and drinking resources to synurbic wildlife, among which bats stand out as an important group. Availabilityofwatersourcesmaythusstronglyinfuencethepersistenceofanimalpopulationsinurbanhabitats. Pond characteristics, as well as landscape structural patterns in the surrounding area, may modulate the use of suchwatersitesbybats.Weinvestigatedbatspeciesrichnessandactivitylevelsinapondarchipelagowithinthe cityofRome,oneofthelargesturbanareasinItaly.Wehypothesizedthatthepresenceofwoodyvegetationand hedgerows afects activity rates over ponds and that bat responses to habitat and landscape structures as well as artifcial illumination are species-specifc. Bat species richness was mainly infuenced by the availability of wooded vegetation within 1000m around ponds, with minor efects of the amount of bank habitat, while bat activity was afected by diferent habitat features in a species-specifc way. All species responded positively to pondproximitytolinearlandscapeelementssuchashedgerowsandtotheamountofbankhabitat.Thepresence of natural banks, the amount of woodland and that of open green areas positively infuenced the activity of diferent species at diferent scales, while distances between ponds and artifcial lights had a species-specifc efect direction. Our results highlight the importance of key factors characterizing ponds and the surrounding habitat in urban landscapes whose appropriate management may improve the viability of synurbic bat popu- lations. 1. Introduction Urban areas are expanding throughout the planet at an impressive pace, quickly replacing natural habitats (Angel et al., 2005). This pro- cess selectively flters out sensitive taxa from wildlife communities, as only species that may cope with such a dramatic environmental change may survive it, or sometimes thrive (Fischer, Schneider, Ahlers, & Miller, 2015; Luniak, 2004). Despite the frequent occurrence of tall trees and the structural similarity to forest patches, urban parks are often very diferent from their natural counterparts due to the absence of urban-sensitive species, the disproportionate abundance of oppor- tunistic ones, and the presence of biological invaders (Magle, Hunt, Vernon, & Crooks, 2012; McKinney, 2006). Yet, urban parks often play a pivotal role in maintaining biological communities in otherwise in- hospitable landscapes (Aronson et al., 2017). Urban parks are typically surrounded by the urban matrix, so they represent a fragmented ar- chipelagoofpoorlyinterconnectedgreenareas(Rudd,Vala,&Schaefer, 2002). To reconcile this new dimension with nature, increasing atten- tion is being paid to the creation or conservation of green spaces in urban areas: remnants of natural vegetation or recreational green areas created ad-hoc may, in fact, provide essential services to both human welfare and wildlife conservation and management (Chiesura, 2004; Stagoll, Lindenmayer, Knight, Fischer, & Manning, 2012). The im- portance of green areas surpasses their local role, since they may also constitute stepping stone systems that favour the crossing of the urban matrix by wildlife, ultimately allowing for the persistence of gene fow and meta-population dynamics (Fernandez-Juricic & Jokimäki, 2001). For such roles to be fulflled, however, the availability of key resources such as food or drinking water has paramount importance. Therefore, the presence of ponds as typical elements of recreational urban green spaces adds on to the importance of city parks for wildlife as key ha- bitats for aquatic or semiaquatic organisms and a source of drinking water for terrestrial organisms (Hassall, 2014). Bats are among the richest mammalian orders, numbering over 1400 species, and their high functional diversity makes them essential providers of a number of diferent ecosystem services, such as polli- nation and seed dispersal (in the tropics) and insect suppression (practically in all regions where they are present: Kunz, Braun de https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2019.103607 Received 24 September 2018; Received in revised form 19 June 2019; Accepted 19 June 2019 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: leonardo.ancillotto@unina.it (L. Ancillotto), luciano.bosso@unina.it (L. Bosso), airelav2@hotmail.com (V.B. Salinas-Ramos), danrusso@unina.it (D. Russo). Landscape and Urban Planning 190 (2019) 103607 0169-2046/ © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. T