Indiana bats depend on two very different homes each year: cold limestone caves for winter hibernation and the loose bark of dying trees for summer roosting, and Pennsylvania’s forests support both stages. All 17 recorded sightings here come from GBIF rather than iNaturalist, consistent with biologist cave surveys and mist-net counts rather than casual photographs of a bat that’s genuinely hard to see well.
Records cluster in March and April, when bats leave hibernation and disperse to summer roosts, and again in November, as they gather to swarm and re-enter caves, near forest habitat like Allegheny National Forest, the Delaware Water Gap, and Ricketts Glen. NatureServe ranks the species S1, critically imperiled, in Pennsylvania, a sharper local concern than its global near-threatened status alone would suggest.
Full species profile
