Artificial light colour temperature influences bat activity patterns in subterranean communities: evidence from disused tunnels

This repository contains the data and R code supporting the analyses presented in the associated manuscript, “Artificial light colour temperature influences bat activity patterns in subterranean communities: evidence from disused tunnels”. Lighting experiments were conducted in seven disused railway tunnels in southern England and Wales between June and September 2024. Each experiment was conducted over four consecutive nights per site, with sampling periods lasting 2 hours and 30 minutes after sunset each night. Experiments began with an unlit control treatment on the first night, followed by one of three lighting treatments: warm white (2700 K), amber (1750 K), and red (1200 K). The repository contains the main dataset of bat activity, data on social calls and feeding buzzes, environmental measurements (temperature and humidity), illuminance measurements, and the R Markdown script used for data processing, statistical analyses, and visualisation. Bat activity was recorded using Wildlife Acoustics Mini Bat Detectors positioned at three locations within each tunnel. Bat calls were identified using the BTO Acoustic Pipeline, retaining calls with a confidence score of 0.5 or higher, following Barré et al. (2019).