Keen’s myotis reaches its northern edge in coastal Alaska, with recorded and plausible habitat running from Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve through Prince William Sound and Kenai Fjords National Park. It’s a coastal specialist tied to the wet, island-studded fringe of the Pacific Northwest, not the interior forests other Alaska bats favor.
It roosts in tree cavities, loose bark, rock crevices, and buildings, then forages along forest edges and over water at night, hunting moths and other insects by echolocation. For decades biologists lumped it in with the northern long-eared bat until the two were formally split apart, and telling small Myotis bats apart in the field is still difficult even for experts.
Records are few, just a handful confirmed statewide, clustered from June through August when Alaska’s long summer daylight overlaps with peak insect activity. That thin record count reflects how hard this bat is to confirm on the wing, not how scarce it actually is along the coast.
Full species profile
