Integrating Banding Records With Acoustic Roost Maps

USGS holds 1.5 million historical bat band records with no spatial bind to modern roost maps. EchoQuilt stitches PIT detections, genetic mark-recapture, and banded individual returns into ceiling-coordinate patches so banded-bat ecology carries forward into multi-decade hibernaculum archives.

The USGS Bat Population Data Project holds 1.5 million individuals banded between 1932 and 1972, with recapture records scattered across state DNR files, university theses, and the occasional 8mm film reel. For every banded bat that returned to a hibernaculum in 1964, the record might say "observed 14 ft from entrance, east wall." No ceiling coordinates. No cluster ID. No photograph of the ceiling geometry that would let a 2026 biologist stand in the same chamber and say "that pocket — that is where band 4729 slept."