This is a colonial, cave dwelling bat frequently occurring in correlation with the frequency of caves, crevices, and abandoned mine tunnels which serve as daytime roosts. They generally prefer semiarid and desert areas lower than 9,000 feet elevation (Tuttle 2003). It is suggested that a colony of several thousand individuals migrate seasonally between the Trans-Pecos region and Frio Cave in Concan, residing in the Trans-Pecos only in the summer and possibly fall (Schmidly 1977). "At Frio Cave the population begins building up in September, and by mid-November it approaches maximum size" (Davis and Schmidly, 1994:32). The ghost-faced bat often shares its roosting sites with Cave Myotis and Mexican Free-tailed Bats (Tuttle 2003). In general, there are no compact clusters associated in their colony roosts as one finds with most cave-dwelling bats (Davis and Schmidly 1994).
Davis, W.B. and D.J. Schmidly, 1994. The mammals of Texas. Texas Parks and Wildlife Press, Austin.
Schmidly, D. J. 1977. The mammals of Trans-Pecos Texas including Big Bend National Park and Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Texas A&M University Press, College Station.
Tuttle, M. D. 2003. Texas bats. Bat Conservation International, Inc., Austin.
§ The Mammals of Texas, Online Edition
A. Ruth Huckaby, Graduate Student, BIOL 5301-Natural History of the Chihuahuan Desert, June, 2006.
Huckaby Update: June 2006
Last Update: 22 Jul 2009