Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Forest Ecology and Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/foreco Mind the gap: Efects of canopy clearings on temperate forest bat assemblages Elena Tena a, ⁎ , Óscar de Paz b , Roberto de la Peña a , Guillermo Fandos c , Marisol Redondo d , José Luis Tellería a a Departamento de Biodiversidad, Ecología y Evolución, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, E-28040 Madrid, Spain b Departamento de Ciencias de la Vida, Facultad de Biología, Ciencias Ambientales y Química, Universidad de Alcalá, E-28801, Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, Spain c Department of Geography, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany d Centro Montes y Aserradero de Valsaín. Organismo Autónomo de Parques Nacionales. Ministerio para la Transición Ecológica y el Reto Demográfico, 40109 Valsaín, Segovia, Spain ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Biodiversity Chiroptera Forest gaps Forest management Habitat selection Landscape heterogeneity ABSTRACT Gaps in the forest canopy appear to play a major role in local species richness as they increase habitat het- erogeneity and border efects. In the case of bats, these small clearings seem to play an important role as foraging and commuting sites. However, further research is required to set the actual role of forest gaps on bat biology in order to consider them as conservation targets in forest management. In this study, we test whether bat species richness and activity are higher in gaps within a large Scot pine (Pinus sylvestris) forest than in the adjacent tree covered control sites. We also test these diferences in the forest specialists since this group is particularly sensitive to forest management. To investigate this, we used bat detectors in 9 gaps and their adjacent control points during ten nights in July - August 2016 and 2017. The trends resulting from the analysis of 228,108 bat calls support that species richness and activity of bat assemblages were higher in gaps than in the adjacent control points. A similar pattern was detected in the most sensitive tree dwelling bat species. These results stress the importance of gaps as useable areas for the forest bat assemblages and suggest the interest of managing gaps for bat conservation within large areas of continuous tree cover. 1. Introduction Forests are among the most diverse biological systems on earth and are also considered important habitats for bats (Lacki et al., 2007). Therefore, it has been set the need to improve management strategies designed to conserve these species in forests, particularly in those exploited for commercial purposes (Tillon et al., 2018). Since bat as- semblages are sensible to forest structure and composition, it is com- monly agreed that forest management will strongly infuence the po- tential of these habitats to conserve bats (Charbonnier et al., 2016). Open areas related to the dynamics of forest succession promote habitat heterogeneity and border efects that are usually related to an increase of species richness (Schnitzer & Carson, 2001). In this context, tree-less clearings produced by natural or human-induced disturbances (Muscolo et al., 2014) within the matrix of forest canopy (gaps therein) can be very attractive to those bat that exploit the mosaics of open and forest habitat patches (Fukui et al., 2011; Bouvet et al., 2016; Brooks et al., 2017). In fact, some studies have proven greater bat activity in openings and logging decks than in the close canopy of commercial forest (Menzel et al., 2002; Wood et al., 2017). However, the re- lationships between the bat assemblages and forest structure are very idiosyncratic as they rely on the habitat preferences of the involved species (e.g. tree-dwelling vs. open habitat bats) and the structure of the canopy, including the availably of holes and crevices (Loeb and O’Keefe, 2011). From this follows that it will be important to assess the actual relationship between gaps and bats before adopting any forest decision-making to protect bats. In this paper, we compare species richness and activity of bat as- semblages between gaps and closed-canopy sites in the Scot pine (Pinus sylvestris) forest of Valsaín (Central Spain). This pinewood has been reported as the richest bat hotspot (22 species) of the Iberian Peninsula and therefore an important site for bat conservation in Spain (Paz et al., 2016, 2017). Overall, our hypothesis is that we will detect greater bat species richness and higher bat activity in gaps than in continuous tree https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2020.118341 Received 10 February 2020; Received in revised form 15 June 2020; Accepted 16 June 2020 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: e.tena@ucm.es (E. Tena), o.depaz@uah.es (Ó. de Paz), delapenaroberto@gmail.com (R. de la Peña), gfandos@ucm.es (G. Fandos), sredondo@oapn.es (M. Redondo), telleria@bio.ucm.es (J.L. Tellería). Forest Ecology and Management 474 (2020) 118341 0378-1127/ © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. T