Microclimate-Driven Cluster Shifts Revealed by Echo Data

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Post-WNS Perimyotis colonies moved from 95.6% warm-back roosting to cold front-entrance zones. EchoQuilt resolves microclimate-driven cluster shifts from passive echo-return patterns, letting biologists watch the movement as an overlay on the 3D hibernaculum quilt.

Pre-WNS, 95.6% of tricolored bats in one studied hibernaculum roosted in the warm back chamber. Post-WNS, those same colonies redistributed to the cooler front-entrance zones. That Ecology and Evolution finding rewrote how biologists read cluster positioning: cluster location is a Pd-pressure response, not a fixed preference. A hibernaculum's warm back chamber hosting a small cluster in 2024 may actually be hosting its most WNS-resistant survivors — or it may be hosting nothing at all because the colony has moved 80 meters forward.

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