
Alona S. Prylutska (Gukasova)Ukrainian Bat Rehabilitation Centre
Alona S. Prylutska (Gukasova)
PhD
About
56
Publications
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Introduction
Interested in bat biology, conservation and education. I'm co-founder and project manager of Ukrainian Bat Rehabilitation Center (Kharkiv, Ukraine).
Additional affiliations
January 2012 - March 2015
Kharkiv zoo
Position
- Lecturer
April 2013 - September 2014
Homilsha Forests National Park
Position
- Scientific associate, zoologist
Education
September 2009 - December 2011
September 2005 - June 2009
Publications
Publications (56)
The urban landscapes of Ukrainian cities have become important winter habitats for bats due to the abundance of multi-storey Soviet-era buildings, which offer numerous roosting opportunities. Over the past 40-50 years, both the number of bat records and the diversity of bat species have significantly increased. Kharkiv city (north-eastern Ukraine),...
The full-scale military aggression against Ukraine (2022-current), has destroyed some small settlements and towns and significant damage to big cities. Abandoned or partially damaged flats (e.g. blasted-out windows) become traps for bats that have already adapted to urban environments. In addition, repair and reconstruction work that is urgently ne...
Established in Kharkiv city in 2013, the Ukrainian Bat Rehabilitation Center became the premier nationwide organisation focusing on bat rescue, rehabilitation, and research.The main priority is saving bats trapped in urban areas or facing human-bat conflicts, especially in winter. Over the past 12 years, the UBRC's team has rescued over 32,000 bats...
Our paper is a direct response to the recent paper by Lobato-Bailón et al. entitled, "Reappraisingthe use of forearm rings for bat species" (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2023.110268). We find it imperative to present our findings as our extensive datasets, gathered over years of diligent research on both captive and wild ringed bats, starkly co...
Seasonal utilization of urban areas by bats remains inadequately explored. This study aimed to comprehensively survey the species composition and population dynamics of bats during both the breeding season (May–July) and autumn migration season (August–September) within a large urban area, specifically Kharkiv city, Ukraine. We conducted multiyear...
Urban areas are the new types of landscapes that have rapidly developed in the Anthropocene and generally mimic mountains and rock habitats. Such areas attract different vertebrate species that naturally prefer rocky habitats, for example, bats, which are common animal inhabitants of the cities in the Northern Hemisphere. Here we review records of...
Amid the devastating war in Ukraine following Russia’s invasion, animals have also been severely affected. The Zgraya Shelter in Zaporizhzhia city has been tirelessly working to rescue and care for animals in need, despite the challenging circumstances. Before the war, the shelter provided assistance to abandoned animals, promoted sterilization ini...
The full-scale war in Ukraine negatively impacted populations of urban and semi-urban animals. This study examines the effects of war-related damages on urban populations of bats in Kharkiv city (NE Ukraine) during 2022. Our findings suggest that 45.1% of buildings used as wintering roosts for N. noctula were either partially damaged or completely...
An integral part of taking care of bats in captivity is the treatment of injured or sick animals. Since 2017, all bats transferred to the Ukrainian Bat Rehabilitation Center have been under the professional supervision of veterinarians and we have greatly expanded the range of pathologies that can be treated.
Relying on bat treatment protocols, ove...
Bats are of high conservational status in most European countries. All bats are under legal protection in Ukraine and included in the national Red Data Book. However, bats remain one of the least studied groups of mammals in Ukraine. Their cryptic lifestyle limits the possibilities of direct observations and, as a result, data on bat distribution a...
From February 24, 2022 we act according to this priority scale. Each day we evaluate the level of danger for team members. The part of the team voluntarily decided to stay in town as long as utilities were running and the stores were open.
Most studies in urban areas focus on green areas within a city given their high value for biodiversity. However, very few have investigated the impact of urbanization on urban green areas at the fringe of cities, as well as long-term data to gather temporal changes. Bats are an interesting taxon to study the impact of urbanization on biodiversity g...
An unexpected record of Tadarida teniotis (Rafinesque, 1814) (adult male) was made in Kharkiv city, NE Ukraine. The bat was found in a private flat on the thirteenth floor of a multi-storey building (1970s construction). This new record is much further North than documented from in-hand and acoustic records of this species in the
Russian Caucasus -...
Urbanization is one of the main drivers of ecological change in the modern world. In most cases, species diversity in urban landscapes is lower than in natural ones; however, some groups of animals are able to exploit and benefit from urban habitat. Pipistrellus kuhlii s.l. is (P. k. lepidus according to recent taxonomic review), a common European...
Рукокрилі, або кажани України залишаються найменш вивченою групою ссавців у країні, до того ж, всі види фауни, відомі до 2009 року, включено до Червоної книги. Щонайменше третина видів фауни кажанів України адаптувалась до життя або тимчасового перебування у містах та населених пунктах. Проте середовище існування у населених пунктах далеке за умова...
Bats are volant and highly mobile mammals that could cover up to 2000 km seasonally (one-way migration). But the level of mobility among different roosts sites in a breeding season, and among breeding areas and hibernation sites is poorly studied. With this communication, we aimed to present results of recaptures (51 cases with a distance of 0.5 km...
The most common approaches for summer bat monitoring in Europe are acoustic recording and captures from roosts. However, these methods provide only fragmentary data about species richness and abundance, without information about population structure. In order to obtain complex information about sex and age structure, in 2008 we developed method wic...
The Bat Rehabilitation Center of Feldman Ecopark (Kharkiv city, Ukraine) is the most significant bat rescue, research and education project in the Eastern Europe. Since 2012 more than 11 000 individuals (alive, injuries and carcasses) of 9 bat species were rescued and received from 59 cities and villages of Ukraine. Moreover there were hundreds of...
This study presents information about the year-round phenology of bats of temperate zones in a city area for the first time. In total, 967 individuals of 5 bat species (Nyctalus noctula [87.5%], Eptesicus serotinus [10.6%], Pipistrellus kuhlii [0.8%], Vespertilio murinus [0.9%], and Plecotus auritus [0.1%]) were recorded during 2013 in Kharkiv. The...
We used mist-netting to study summer bat assemblages in 3 state nature biosphere reserves in the European part of Russia from
26 June to 29 July 2013: Oksky, Ryazan region (54°44′N, 40°54′E); Voronezhsky, Voronezh region (51°55′N, 39°38′E); and “Bryansky
Les”, Bryansk region (52°27′N, 33°53′E). The main research efforts were in locations where Nyct...
We studied summer bat assemblages using the standardized mistnetting approach. We surveyed 11 locations in European part of Russia (Smolensk, Bryansk, Ryazan and Voronezh regions) and the northern and the northeastern Ukraine (Kiev and Kharkiv regions) in 2009-2013 years. The survey was conducted in July, when young bats start to fly. In each locat...
The Brandt’s Bat (Myotis brandtii Eversmann, 1845) is one of the rarest bat species in Ukraine. There are only a few known locations of this species in summer and less known hibernacula in the whole country. Moreover, for territory of the north-eastern Ukraine are known only two underground bat hibernation sites with aggregation more than several t...
The study of bats as bioindicators in urban ecosystems is extremely important. The transformation of environment by humans is a rapid process of replacement natural habitats by urban and rural ones. The number of bats in cities increases every year and new data about species distribution and sex-age structure are required.
This work is the first de...
The role of big cities as the elements of landscape during bat seasonal movements is not clear. We studied seasonal changes in bat assemblage in Kharkiv city (NE Ukraine) in 2010-2014. Kharkiv has 1.5 million population and area 350 km2. Data was collected in following ways: 1) monitoring and gathering of bats inside buildings; 2) collecting bats f...
A group of bats numbering over a hundred individuals was found on the 2nd of February 2014 in Poltava city (49°34′28″ N, 34°34′07″ E) near a multi-storey panel house (Ukraine). A part of dead animals (one Eptesicus serotinus, 34 Nyctalus noctula) as well as 10 still alive noctules were transferred to the Rehabilitation Center for Bats in Kharkov. M...
European bats are an endangered group of animals. Several species are strictly forest-dwelling and need
trees of different stages of decay for roosting. Until 2011 bats of beech forest of Ukrainian Carpathian
and Crimea Mountains were not the focus of any scientific research. We studied bat assemblage in
primeval beech forest (44055’N, 34041’E) at...
Results of bat fauna studies in Chernobyl exclusion zone in 2007–2013 are presented in the article.
Inhabiting 14 species (Barbastella barbastellus, Eptesicus serotinus, Myotis brandtii, M. dasycneme, M.
daubentonii, M. mystacinus, Nyctalus lasiopterus, N. leisleri, N. noctula, Pipistrellus kuhlii, P. nathusii, P.
pygmaeus, Plecotus auritus, Vesper...
Data collected during work of bat contact-center in Kharkov are presented. Findings about bats were received on author’s telephones and e-mails. Date, place, peculiarities and conditions of findings, detailed description of external appearance and number of bats, contacts of person who found a bat(s) were registered. People were asked to send im-ag...
Results of bat fauna research in Holosiyivsky forest (Kiev city) in June 2011 are presented. Bats were caught with mist-nets and traps of two types, bat sounds were recorded with use of ultrasound detectors and digital recorders. 204 individuals of 8 species were caught: M. daubentonii, N. leisleri, N. noctula, E. serotinus, P. pygmaeus, P. nathusi...
The article presents the results of an episodical research of bats within the territory of Belgorod region,
namely the State natural preserve «Belogorie». 8 bat species were caught, but taking into consideration
the literature data we can assume that the full list of bat could include 12 species or more. Data on
habitat distribution are presented,...
We tested how the effectiveness of capturing bats with mist nets varied by month (April-September), period in the bat life cycle, habitat and capture effort. A total of 898 bats of 10 species were captured in the National Nature Park "Gomolshansky lessy" from 2006 to 2009. The most successful month of mist-netting was July with a median value of 4....
Sixteen bat species were found (Rh. hipposideros, M. myotis, M. daubentonii, M.
dasycneme, M. mystacinus, M. brandtii, M. bechsteinii, M. nattereri, N. leisleri, N. noctula,
E. serotinus, P.kuhlii, P. nathusii, B. barbastellus, Pl. austriacus, Pl. auritus) during intensive
investigation of bat fauna on the territory of Galytskiy NNP in 2010. Six sp...
We tested how the effectiveness of capturing bats with mist nets varied by
month (April-September), period in the bat life cycle, habitat and capture effort. A total of
898 bats of 10 species were captured in the National Nature Park “Gomolshansky lessy”
from 2006 to 2009. The most successful month of mist-netting was July with a median
value of 4....
The data presented in this paper is a result of inventory of bat fauna and structure of assemblage
in the National Park ‘Smolensk Lakeland’, Smolensk region, Russia. A total of 318 bats of eight
species (Myotis brandtii, M. mystacinus, M. daubentonii, Nyctalus noctula, N. leisleri, Pipistrellus
nathusii, Vespertilio murinus and Plecotus auritus) we...
Daylight migration of several groups of noctule bats (Nyctalus noctula) was observed in the Kharkov region, Ukraine, in September 2010. The bats were foraging above steppe slopes and were moving from the northeast to the southwest. It is the first evidence of such unusual behavior of bats in NE Ukraine. The daylight migration of bats in the south o...
Two main approaches for bat monitoring programs are applied in Europe: acoustic monitoring and visual monitoring with regular surveys of potential summer and winter roosts. These methods are remote techniques and provide only fragmentary data about bat number and relative abundance at present moment, without data on the population structure. Thus w...
An immature male of the greater noctule, Europe’s largest bat species, was netted on the Ilya River (51° 24’ N, 29° 37’ E) in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (northern Ukraine) during the night of 29–30 July 2009. This is the first record of the species in Ukraine in the last 50 years. All available data on the greater noctule obtained within the pres...
The bat fauna and structure of summer bat assemblage of projecting protected area “Yaremovskoe” (Izum district, Kharkov region) was studied. Bats were caught by mistnets. We used the method of bat fauna inventory that was worked up on the territory of NNP “Gomilshanskiy lessy”. 704 individuals of 10 species (M. daubentonii, M. dasycneme, M. brandti...