The cave myotis is one of Arizona’s more numerous bats where it occurs, yet you would not guess it from the photographic record. Open occurrence databases hold 1,135 records for it in Arizona, but only 14 are iNaturalist photos. The rest come from cave counts, mist-net surveys, and museum work, which a colonial, night-flying bat lends itself to far better than casual snapshots.
A colony bat of the southern deserts
As its name says, the cave myotis gathers in caves and abandoned mines, sometimes in colonies of thousands, and forages over desert scrub, mesquite, and streamside corridors below the high forest. That habitat is a southern-Arizona story: records concentrate in Santa Cruz, Pima, Pinal, and Cochise counties and thin quickly toward the cooler Colorado Plateau. A single warm mine or cave can become the center of an entire colony’s summer world.
Seasonal comings and goings
Detections rise through the warm season and fade in winter, when many cave myotis move to hibernation roosts or drop into torpor. The apparent quiet of the cold months is the colony sleeping, not gone. NatureServe ranks the species S3, vulnerable, in Arizona, and because it packs into so few roosts, disturbance at one cave can ripple through a large share of the state’s cave myotis.
Common questions
Where is a cave myotis most likely to be? In and around the caves and old mines of southeastern and central Arizona, foraging at night over nearby desert washes and streams.
Full species profile
