Tennessee’s occurrence record for the Indiana bat holds 222 entries, but only 3 came from casual iNaturalist sightings. The other 220 sit in GBIF as systematic survey data, mostly winter cave counts rather than a chance encounter. That split is the real story behind the numbers.
Counted in caves, not in flight
Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area, Fall Creek Falls State Park, and South Cumberland State Park all sit on the Cumberland Plateau, a landscape riddled with limestone caves under its sandstone cap. Those caves hold the steady winter temperature and humidity Indiana bats need to hibernate, and biologists survey them by counting bats directly on the cave ceiling rather than waiting for someone to spot one flying at dusk. That’s why the species shows up here as recorded, not as commonly seen.
A record shaped by hibernation, not summer flight
Records spike in February and climb again in November, right when Tennessee’s Cumberland Plateau caves fill with wintering bats and survey crews are most likely to be counting them. Summer months carry almost no records at all, not because the bats vanish, but because they scatter into the surrounding forest to roost alone or in small groups under loose bark, far harder to document than a clustered hibernating colony.
Status in Tennessee
NatureServe ranks the Indiana bat S1, critically imperiled, in Tennessee, and G2 globally, reflecting steep losses from white-nose syndrome across its cave-wintering range. It’s native to the state, where its future depends on undisturbed caves for winter hibernation on the Cumberland Plateau and enough intact forest nearby for summer roosting.
Full species profile
