Big brown bat (Eptesicus fuscus) capture records before and after white-nose syndrome

We collated 30 years of big brown bat capture records collected between 1990 to 2020. We collected data from wildlife agencies and researchers in the eastern US. We kept capture records that fell within the months of March through October, representing spring through fall months when bats are surveyed outside of hibernacula. We then paired this data with spatiotemporal spread of the fungal pathogen Pseudogymnoascus destructans (causal agent of white-nose syndrome that kills North American temperate bats), of which, big brown bats are susceptible to infection. The completed dataset represents 30,497 individual big brown bat captures across 3,797 unique sites., We collated big brown bat capture records collected between March and October 1990–2020 from wildlife agencies and researchers in Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Virginia. We then paired this data with pathogen introduction and invasion information for Pseudogymnoascus destructans (fungal pathogen that causes white-nose syndrome and kills North American temperate bats).
We used capture records that included date of capture, capture site name, sex (male/female), reproductive status (females only: non-reproductive/pregnant/lactating/post-lactating), age (adult/juvenile), mass (g) and forearm length (mm) at time of capture. Records that did not meet these minimal requirements were removed from the dataset. Site names were then masked due to the potential of exposing the location of sensitive species by labeling each site name by state and a unique identifier. We used data for adult big brown bat captures only. ...,