Cave myotis roost by the thousands in limestone caves and abandoned mines across the Trans-Pecos, and Texas’s 1,110 records trace that geology closely: Big Bend, Guadalupe Mountains, and the Davis Mountains all sit on the limestone karst these bats need for daytime shelter and maternity colonies.
Records spike hard in June and July, the maternity season when colonies swell with pups and bats leave the cave in large, visible nightly emergences that draw the most observers; the near-silence from November through February simply reflects a bat that’s torpid or has moved to a winter roost, not one that’s disappeared.
Texas carries a NatureServe rank of S2, Imperiled, for cave myotis, a meaningfully sharper conservation signal than the species’ secure global status, tied to how few of these limestone roost sites exist and how vulnerable a single disturbed cave can be for an entire colony.
Full species profile
