Not only hedgerows, but also flower fields can enhance bat activity in intensively used agricultural landscapes

Agri-environment schemes (AES) have become important tools for farmland biodiversity conservation, providing suitable habitats, resources, and connectivity within agricultural landscapes. Bats are rarely studied in relation to AES effectiveness in contrast to birds, even though their presence and activity as biological control agents on insects, especially pest species, can be important for agricultural crops. While the role of hedgerows for bat occurrence and activity, as well as for their prey's diversity and abundance has been widely studied, the role of other AESs such as flower fields remains unclear. We monitored the activity of the main functional groups (edge, narrow and open space foragers) using ultrasound recorders, as well as potential prey abundances using light traps, across 35 study sites representing different AES in Central Germany from late July to September 2018. The sampled AES consisted of annual flower fields, mixed flower fields (with annual and biennial vegetatio..., Bats were recorded with ultrasound recorders (Song Meter SM2Bat + model, Wildlife Acoustics, Inc.) Potential insect prey was collected using light traps, each lamp possessed four small LED lights: green, blue and two UV (ELEKON AG, 2018), with wavelengths of λmax ∼530 nm, 465 nm, 340 nm, and 348 nm, and a total illuminance of 5 lx, powered by two AA NiMH batteries (Villarroya-Villalba et al., 2021). We used QGIS 3.6 (Development Team, 2019) and information obtained from land use maps (SLA, 2018) to digitise agricultural fields and landscape elements based on satellite images (Map data ©2019 Google based on GoogleSatellite plugin). All statistical analyses were conducted in R 3.6.0 (R Development Core Team, 2019). , The datasets are in .csv format, which open in the R Software (R Development Core Team, 2019).农业环境计划（Agri-environment schemes, AES）已成为农田生物多样性保护的重要工具，可为农业景观内的物种提供适宜栖息地、资源与连通性。相较于鸟类，针对农业环境计划对蝙蝠保护效果的相关研究仍较为匮乏，尽管蝙蝠作为昆虫（尤其是害虫物种）的生物防治天敌，其存在与活动对农作物生产具有重要意义。尽管关于树篱对蝙蝠出现与活动、以及其猎物多样性与丰度的作用已得到广泛研究，但其他类型的农业环境计划（如花卉种植田）的相关作用仍不明晰。 2018年7月下旬至9月，研究团队在德国中部代表不同AES类型的35个样地中，利用超声记录仪监测主要功能群（林缘、狭空间与开阔空间觅食者）的活动情况，并利用灯光诱捕法调查潜在猎物的丰度。本次采样涵盖的AES类型包括一年生花卉田、混播花卉田（含一年生和二年生植被……）。 研究采用超声记录仪（Song Meter SM2Bat+型号，Wildlife Acoustics公司）记录蝙蝠声信号。潜在昆虫猎物通过灯光诱捕器收集，每台诱捕器配备4盏小型LED灯：绿色、蓝色及两盏紫外灯（ELEKON AG, 2018），峰值波长分别约为λmax~530 nm、465 nm、340 nm与348 nm，总照度为5 lx，由两节AA镍氢电池供电（Villarroya-Villalba et al., 2021）。 本研究使用QGIS 3.6（开发团队，2019）结合土地利用地图（SLA, 2018）的信息，基于卫星影像（地图数据©2019 Google，基于GoogleSatellite插件）对农田与景观要素进行数字化处理。 所有统计分析均在R 3.6.0环境中完成（R开发核心团队, 2019）。本数据集以.csv格式存储，可使用R软件（R开发核心团队, 2019）直接打开。