South Carolina’s occurrence databases hold 30 records for Rafinesque’s big-eared bat, split between iNaturalist and GBIF, and every one of them comes from the Lowcountry.
A bottomland bat of the coastal plain
Records cluster at Huntington Beach State Park, Francis Marion National Forest, and the ACE Basin, all sites built around bottomland hardwood swamp, tidal creek, and maritime forest rather than mountain or Piedmont ground. That fits the species’ habits elsewhere in the Southeast, where it favors hollow black gum and cypress trees standing in wet ground, along with old barns, cisterns, and abandoned buildings scattered through the same low country.
Ears built for gleaning, not open-air chases
Rafinesque’s big-eared bat has ears nearly as long as its body is wide, and it uses them to hunt by gleaning, plucking moths and other insects directly off leaves and bark rather than chasing prey through open air the way many bats do. That slow, careful hunting style keeps it working close to cover, one more reason it favors the dense hardwood swamp and hollow trees the Lowcountry supplies.
Status in South Carolina
NatureServe ranks the species S2, imperiled, in South Carolina, a step down from its globally secure IUCN status. It’s native to the state, and its scattered Lowcountry records reflect a bat that depends on old hollow trees and abandoned structures, both of which disappear as bottomland forest gets cleared or drained.
