RIG Transboundary ecosystem services of migratory bats: modeling spatial mismatches and subsidies

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People benefit from the activities of many species. Examples of these benefits, or ecosystem services, include controlling crop pests, pollinating food plants, and removing contaminants from water and soils. If a species lives where it provides an ecosystem service it may be relatively straightforward to link efforts to protect that species to the benefits that it provides. This linkage may be more difficult for migratory species, which may provide more benefits in one part of their geographic range. For example, some migratory bats overwinter in central Mexico and spend summers in US-Mexico borderlands where they consume pests that plague cotton crops. Cotton revenues are greater in the United States than in Mexico, so the value of ecosystem services provided by insect-eating bats may be greater in the US than in Mexico. Disparities in the value of ecosystem services provided in different locations may not reflect the importance of different habitats to the species providing those services. If people in an area that is critical to the species get no direct benefits, they may have few incentives to conserve critical habitat. Further, people in the area that reaps the most benefit may be getting a subsidy from people in the first location. This project will quantify these subsidies for migratory free-tailed bats and establish a framework for implementing a payment system that can incentivize habitat conservation in areas where the species provide less direct benefit to humans. Broader impacts of this project will include support for a junior female Hispanic faculty member, training of a minority postdoctoral researcher, mentoring of an undergraduate researcher, development of educational tools for use in an undergraduate class on ecosystem services, and development of a framework that should be useful to resource managers.