Arkansas’s occurrence databases hold just 16 records of the southeastern myotis, a small bat that roosts in caves and hunts low over water. Most of this species’ range sits along the Gulf Coast and Florida, and Arkansas marks its far northwestern edge.
Cave roosts, wetland dinner table
This bat depends on caves for shelter through much of its range, and Arkansas’s karst country in the Ozark Plateau, riddled with caves along the Buffalo National River and through Ozark and Ouachita National Forests, gives it exactly that. At night it drops low over slow water and wetland edges to hunt aquatic insects, so a roost near the Buffalo’s spring-fed pools puts it within easy reach of both a cave to sleep in and water to feed over.
A northwestern outlier, thinly recorded
Most of the southeastern myotis’s range runs along the Gulf Coast, with Florida’s caves and swamps at its center, and Arkansas sits well outside that stronghold, more disjunct outpost than core range. Its Arkansas records fall in March and May, fitting the early-spring window when this species is most active around its cave roosts before summer heat sets in.
Status in Arkansas
NatureServe ranks the southeastern myotis S3, vulnerable, in Arkansas, and it’s native to the state. A record this sparse, at the far edge of the species’ range and tucked into a small footprint of cave country, says more about how little of Arkansas fits this bat’s narrow needs than about any decline.
