The Arizona myotis is a bat in Colorado. Open occurrence databases hold just 81 records for it here, every one a GBIF specimen or survey entry rather than a public photo, because a small brown bat on the wing at night is almost impossible to identify by sight. Most of what we know about where it lives in Colorado comes from biologists with mist nets and acoustic detectors.
A southern bat at the edge of its range
Colorado sits near the northern limit of the Arizona myotis, a mouse-eared relative of the little brown bat, and the map bears that out. Records fall almost entirely in the south, led by Montezuma County in the far southwest and spreading east through Las Animas, Rio Grande, and Saguache. These are places of ponderosa and montane forest threaded with rivers and creeks, since the species forages over water and along streamside corridors and roosts in caves, rock crevices, and sometimes buildings.
Why the records are all summer
The seasonal pattern is stark: nearly every record falls in July and August, with the rest of the year close to blank. That is not the animal disappearing so much as the surveys stopping. Bats are netted and recorded during the warm months when they are actively foraging and raising young in maternity roosts. Once cold weather arrives the myotis moves to hibernation sites and drops out of detection entirely until the next field season.
Status in the state
The Arizona myotis is native to Colorado and globally listed as least concern, but NatureServe leaves its state rank unranked, a sign of how little is confirmed about its numbers here. Like other cave-roosting bats it faces the looming threat of white-nose syndrome spreading through the West. There is no casual way to see one; the animal is known through the quiet, careful work of bat surveys in the state’s southern forests.
Full species profile
