Tennessee has just 11 documented records of the eastern small-footed myotis, all logged through GBIF, and none from iNaturalist, for the smallest bat in the eastern United States.
A bat that prefers a crevice to a cave mouth
This myotis roosts in rock crevices, loose rock slopes, cliff faces, and buildings rather than deep inside caves, and it hibernates near cave and mine entrances in the cold, drafty zone instead of the warmer interior chambers many other bats use. Tennessee’s scattered records come from three very different rock landscapes that all offer that kind of crevice, the sandstone gorges of the Cumberland Plateau near Fall Creek Falls, the limestone country near Land Between the Lakes, and rocky high-elevation outcrops in the Smokies.
A habit that hides it from standard surveys
Because it hibernates in the colder entrance zone rather than deep inside a cave, standard winter cave counts that focus on the warmer interior can miss it entirely, which may explain why a state with thousands of caves has confirmed so few records of this particular bat.
Status in Tennessee
NatureServe ranks the eastern small-footed myotis S2, Imperiled, and lists it as native to Tennessee. USGS NAS doesn’t list it as nonindigenous in the state.
