Determining a species’ distribution is essential for any ecological or conservation research; such as understanding the implications of anthropogenic impacts on biodiversity. As with many other taxa, bats are being increasingly threatened by human activity. Species distribution modelling can be used as an important conservation tool to predict suitable habitats and environmental conditions for focal species, particularly when used in ecologically diverse areas where there is little biological data.

In this study ecological niche models will be used to predict the current potential distributions of focal cave-dwelling bat species in geographic space. Fieldwork will be carried out to ‘ground truth’ model outputs by surveying areas predicted to be optimal, marginal or unsuitable. Extrapolative models will also be generated to forecast range shifts in focal bat distributions over time in response to climate change and habitat conversions, using a number of different scenarios and variables (e.g. annual temperature; Rebelo et al. 2010).