The Indiana bat carries the state’s name for a reason: this is where the species was first described, and today it’s one of the thinnest records in Indiana’s own mammal atlas, just 3 entries from 2000 on, all of them research-grade iNaturalist observations.
Named here, and still tied to these same caves
Naturalists first described the Indiana bat in the 1920s from bats found in Wyandotte Cave, in the unglaciated Southern Hills and Knobs of south-central Indiana. Nearly a century later, two of the state’s three recent records, from Harrison and Monroe counties, still come from that same limestone cave region the species depends on for winter hibernation, and the third from Morgan County just to the north.
Why the recent record is so thin
The three recent records fall in February, June, and July, too few to show a season. Biologists track the species mainly through coordinated hibernacula surveys during the coldest weeks of the year, when thousands of bats cluster together in a handful of caves and can be counted directly, while the same bats scattered under loose tree bark each summer are far harder to confirm and log.
Status in Indiana
NatureServe ranks the Indiana bat S1, critically imperiled, in the state that gave it its name, far below its Near Threatened rating globally. Indiana’s cave-hibernating colonies have been hit hard by white-nose syndrome, and because so much of the species winters in so few sites, damage to a single cave can affect a very large share of the state’s bats at once.
Full species profile
