Bats of Turkey: Diversity, Habitats, and Conservation

Türkiye’s 2025 national mammal checklist records 43 native bat species in six families. The list spans fruit bats, horseshoe bats, tomb bats, free-tailed bats, long-fingered bats, and 33 vesper bats, but it should be treated as a dated, source-based inventory rather than a permanently fixed total because several Turkish bat groups are still being revised taxonomically.[a]

Why older sources often report 39 species

A nationwide synthesis published in 2020 reported 39 species after combining 152 field records gathered from 2004 to 2018 with records extracted from 131 earlier studies. That study was a major distributional baseline, but its total reflected the taxonomy and evidence available at the time.[b] The 2025 checklist reaches 43 through later taxonomic treatment and recognition of taxa such as Miniopterus pallidus, Myotis hoveli, Myotis tschuliensis, and Myotis schaubi.

The 43 species listed for Türkiye in 2025

The table follows the names and family placement printed in the 2025 national checklist. English names are supplied as practical labels; scientific names should be used when comparing datasets because common names vary among publications.

One family contains more than three quarters of the checklist

Vespertilionidae accounts for 33 species, or about 77% of the national total. The remaining ten species are divided among five families. This uneven composition helps explain why Turkish bat research repeatedly encounters difficult species complexes within Myotis, Eptesicus, Pipistrellus, and Plecotus.

The same bat may appear under different names in current databases

The Mammal Diversity Database is updated as mammalian taxonomy changes and released version 2.4 in January 2026.[c] Its treatment does not match the 2025 Turkish checklist in every case. The checklist table above therefore preserves the national source’s names, while the crosswalk below shows selected differences that affect searches, dataset joins, and conservation records.

Roost habitat and feeding habitat are separate parts of a bat’s range

A cave record identifies a roost, not the whole habitat used by the colony. Bats may leave an underground site and forage over woodland, orchards, grazing land, rivers, reservoirs, wetlands, cliffs, or settlements. Conservation fails when it protects the entrance of a roost but removes the commuting corridor or feeding area that supports it.

EUROBATS habitat guidance treats forests, water bodies, linear vegetation, feeding grounds, and commuting routes as connected conservation units rather than isolated patches.[j] For Türkiye, that landscape approach is especially relevant where cave-rich limestone, irrigated agriculture, orchards, river valleys, mountain forest, and dry steppe occur within a few kilometres of one another.

Regional studies reveal different parts of the national fauna

No single survey covers every season, habitat, and province. Three regional studies illustrate both the ecological breadth of Turkish bats and the strong effect of survey design on reported totals.

Thrace and northwestern underground sites

A survey of 32 underground sites in Turkish Thrace reported about 76,000 bats belonging to 13 species. Dupnisa Cave held an estimated 28,000 bats of five species during hibernation, while Koyunbaba Cave held an estimated 23,000 bats of six species in a nursery assemblage. These are historical survey estimates from the study period, not current colony counts. The work showed how a small number of caves can support large seasonal aggregations and how tourism or repeated entry can affect several species at once.[k]

Southeastern mountains, dry valleys, plains, and river systems

Fieldwork conducted from 2004 to 2017 documented 15 species in southeastern Türkiye across glaciated mountains, arid steppe, rocky valleys, plains, and river-linked habitats. The study added locality evidence for the naked-rumped tomb bat, including roost use in rock crevices. Its findings demonstrate why a cave-only inventory would underrepresent desert-edge and fissure-roosting taxa in the southeast.[l]

Central and eastern Mediterranean landscapes

A regional treatment based on 200 specimens recorded 20 species in the central and eastern Mediterranean part of Türkiye. The assemblage included the Egyptian fruit bat, all five nationally listed horseshoe bats, both large mouse-eared bats, the long-fingered bat, the Anatolian serotine, long-eared bats, pipistrelles, and the European free-tailed bat. Caves, ruins, buildings, orchards, wooded slopes, and warm coastal or subcoastal terrain all contribute to this regional mixture.[m]

Anatolia holds conservation value below the species level

Species totals alone do not capture the genetic structure of Turkish bats. A phylogeographic study examined 33 Near Eastern bat species using mitochondrial markers and identified 15 genetically distinct populations within 12 species and the large Myotis complex. The authors highlighted the Balkans, the Caucasus, and southern Anatolia as areas containing divergent populations and argued that management should account for intraspecific lineages as well as named species.[n]

Protecting one population elsewhere in Europe does not automatically preserve the genetic variation held by an Anatolian population of the same named species.

Global categories identify only part of Türkiye’s conservation burden

The categories below are global IUCN statuses reported by the cited current taxonomic or species sources. They are not a national Red List for Türkiye, and they do not measure the condition of each Turkish population. A globally Least Concern species may still have few verified national sites, while a globally threatened species may depend on one or more large Turkish colonies.

Threats act through different roosting and movement systems

Cave tourism and underground disturbance

Human entry can wake hibernating bats, separate mothers from dependent young, alter temperature and airflow, and cause a colony to abandon a chamber. Lighting, paved routes, amplified sound, smoke, and poorly designed entrance gates can extend the disturbance beyond the time visitors are physically present. A cave should therefore be assessed by season, chamber use, species, colony function, and connected feeding habitat before access is expanded.

Renovation and demolition of occupied structures

Roof repairs, insulation, bridge maintenance, restoration of castles, and demolition can remove roosts that have been reused for years. The biological risk depends on timing: closing an entrance during maternity season can trap adults or young, while winter work can expose torpid animals. Surveys should cover the season relevant to the suspected roost, and replacement structures should match the original crevice dimensions, temperature range, access height, and surrounding flight route.

Loss of veteran trees and forest continuity

Tree-roosting bats may switch among several cavities or loose-bark roosts within a season. Retaining a single known tree is therefore weaker protection than maintaining a network of mature trees, deadwood, layered woodland, and dark connections to feeding areas. Salvage felling after fire or storms can remove roost structures even when canopy cover appears little changed on a map.

Water alteration, insect decline, and pesticide exposure

Drainage, canalization, polluted runoff, removal of riparian vegetation, and reduced surface water can lower insect production and remove drinking sites. Broad-spectrum insecticides can reduce prey and may expose bats through contaminated insects. Effects can extend far from a roost when a colony depends on a river corridor, orchard belt, wetland, or grazing mosaic for nightly feeding.

Wind energy and illuminated airspace

High-flying and migratory bats can collide with turbine blades or die after rapid pressure changes near operating rotors. Risk varies by species, season, wind speed, topography, and movement route, so a short ground-level detector survey cannot define the full exposure of a project. EUROBATS work on wind turbines emphasizes pre-construction assessment, operational monitoring, mortality searches corrected for detection bias, and turbine curtailment when activity and risk are highest.[u] Artificial light can add another barrier by illuminating cave entrances, rivers, tree lines, and commuting corridors used by light-averse species.

Conservation measures should match the evidence type

Why a national distribution map remains incomplete

Available occurrence records are concentrated around surveyed caves, accessible roads, universities, long-running field projects, and well-known colonies. Sparse records in another area may mean low survey effort rather than bat absence. The bias is stronger for tree-roosting, high-flying, quiet-calling, or cryptic species that are less likely to be found during cave inspections or identified from short acoustic recordings.

• Museum and literature records can preserve valuable historical evidence, but their names may require reinterpretation under current taxonomy.
• Acoustic records can document activity without locating a roost, and some species cannot be separated confidently from calls alone.
• Roost counts measure animals at one place and time; they do not equal national population size.
• Genetic records can resolve cryptic species but remain geographically uneven and depend on sample quality and reference sequences.
• Absence from a dataset is not evidence of national or regional absence unless survey design and detection probability support that conclusion.

A stronger national monitoring system needs compatible records

Repeatable monitoring should separate hibernation counts, maternity counts, emergence counts, acoustic activity, capture records, carcass records, and confirmed roost locations. Each record should retain the original scientific name, later taxonomic interpretation, date, coordinates, method, observer, identification confidence, life stage or colony function when known, and links to voucher, photograph, sound file, or sequence evidence.

EUROBATS monitoring guidance supports species-appropriate combinations of underground counts, emergence surveys, acoustic methods, capture, roost checks, and structured trend analysis rather than a single method for all bats.[v] In Türkiye, compatible long-term records would help distinguish true population change from changes in taxonomic naming, survey effort, detector technology, and access to known roosts.

Sources and Verification

1. [a] Sözen, M. and Çolak, F. (2025), An updated checklist of the mammals of Türkiye — Used for the national total, native coding, family placement, and the 43-species checklist.
2. [b] Yorulmaz, T. and Arslan, N. (2020), Current status of the bats in Turkey with their ecogeographic distributions and recommendations for national conservation status — Used for the earlier 39-species total, survey scope, and record-based national baseline.
3. [c] American Society of Mammalogists, Mammal Diversity Database — Used for the current database release context and taxonomic cross-checking.
4. [d] Mammal Diversity Database: Cnephaeus anatolicus — Used for the accepted genus, species treatment, Turkish distribution, and taxonomic note for the Anatolian serotine.
5. [e] Mammal Diversity Database: Cnephaeus bottae — Used to document the revised genus and the current conflict between MDD country coding and the Turkish checklist.
6. [f] Mammal Diversity Database: Miniopterus pallidus — Used for its separation from M. schreibersii, family placement, Turkish occurrence, and Near Threatened category.
7. [g] Mammal Diversity Database: Myotis hoveli — Used for the recent species treatment, relation to the M. nattereri complex, and Not Evaluated category.
8. [h] Mammal Diversity Database: Myotis tschuliensis — Used for the split from the M. nattereri complex and Not Evaluated category.
9. [i] Mammal Diversity Database: Myotis schaubi — Used for the uncertain Turkish country coding, taxonomic caveat, and Not Evaluated category.
10. [j] EUROBATS Publication Series No. 9, Guidance on the conservation and management of feeding areas and commuting routes — Used for connected management of forests, water, linear vegetation, feeding habitat, and flight routes.
11. [k] Furman, A. and Özgül, A. (2004), The conservation value of cave-dwelling bats in northwestern Turkey — Used for the 32-site survey, historical colony estimates, species total, and cave-disturbance evidence.
12. [l] Yorulmaz, T. and colleagues, Bats in Southeastern Turkey — Used for the 2004–2017 field scope, 15 recorded species, southeastern habitat breadth, and tomb-bat locality evidence.
13. [m] Karataş, A. (2019), The Bats of the Central and Eastern Mediterranean Region — Used for the 20-species regional assemblage and Mediterranean specimen-based records.
14. [n] Çoraman, E., Furman, A., Karataş, A. and Bilgin, R. (2013), Phylogeographic analysis of Anatolian bats — Used for the mitochondrial study scope, divergent population findings, and conservation value of Anatolian lineages.
15. [o] Mammal Diversity Database: Rhinolophus mehelyi — Used for Turkish occurrence and the reported global Vulnerable category.
16. [p] Mammal Diversity Database: Rhinolophus euryale — Used for Turkish occurrence and the reported global Near Threatened category.
17. [q] Mammal Diversity Database: Miniopterus schreibersii — Used for the reported global Vulnerable category and current family placement.
18. [r] Mammal Diversity Database: Nyctalus lasiopterus — Used for Turkish occurrence and the reported global Vulnerable category.
19. [s] EUROBATS: Myotis capaccinii — Used for the Vulnerable category and the species’ linked dependence on underground roosts and aquatic feeding habitat.
20. [t] Bat Conservation International: Myotis bechsteinii — Used for the global Near Threatened category and tree-hole, old-forest habitat association.
21. [u] EUROBATS, Report of the Intersessional Working Group on Wind Turbines and Bat Populations — Used for wind-energy risk assessment, fatality monitoring, and operational mitigation.
22. [v] EUROBATS, Guidelines for long-term monitoring of European bat populations — Used for species-appropriate survey methods and repeatable trend monitoring.