Bat activity and diversity in agricultural landscapes in Illinois, USA

This data set documents bat activity (counts per detector-night per phonic group) and bat diversity (number of bat species per detector-night) in relation to distance to the nearest forested corridor in a row crop agriculture dominated landscape and in relation to relative crop pest abundance. This data set was used to assess if bats were homogeneously distributed over a near-uninterrupted agricultural landscape and to assess the importance of forested corridors and the presence of pest species on their distribution across the landscape. Data was collected with 50 AudioMoth bat detectors along 10 transects, with each transect having 5 detectors. The transects started at a forest corridor and extended out for 4 km into uninterrupted row crop agriculture. Pest abundance was extrapolated from data collected in the same county during the same time as the study. Potentially important weather covariates were extracted from the nearest operational weather station.