Wyoming’s records for this bat cluster in the Red Desert and along river corridors like the Green River near Seedskadee National Wildlife Refuge, exactly the kind of broken, rocky high-desert country the species depends on. The state’s badlands, eroded buttes, and cliff faces give it the tight rock crevices it needs to roost through the day, in country most other Wyoming mammals pass over.
Once night falls, these bats slip out of narrow cracks in canyon walls and rimrock to hunt low over open ground and along water, picking off beetles and other insects. Cold nights don’t shut them down the way they do some bats; instead the species drops into torpor to save energy and rouses again once temperatures climb, a trait suited to the wide day-to-night swings of Wyoming’s high desert.
Records run heaviest from May through September, tracking the active season between hibernation stretches, and most of Wyoming’s 215 records come from GBIF rather than iNaturalist. That gap, plus the species’ habit of roosting alone or in small groups in cracks survey teams can miss, means it’s likely more widespread across Wyoming’s rock country than the record count alone suggests.
Full species profile
