Nyctalus lasiopterus (Schreber, 1780)

Sachanowicz, Konrad, Ciechanowski, Mateusz, Rachwald, Alek & Piskorski, Michał, 2015, Overview of bat species reported in Albania with the first country records for eight species, Journal of Natural History 50, pp. 513-521 : 518-519

Nyctalus lasiopterus

Lura National Park (41°43.039 ʹ N, 20°11.908 ʹ E, 1430 m a.s.l.), 28 June 2011, 1 sexually active ♂ ad . netted over a road in an old mountain beech forest.

This record fills the large gap in the distribution of this rarely recorded species in the western Balkans, where it was previously recorded only in Croatia ( Kovač et al. 2011) and Greece ( Hanák et al. 2001). As N. lasiopterus depends strongly on old hollow trees for roosting ( Estók et al. 2007), it may be restricted to difficult-to-access mountain locations in Albania due to the heavy deforestation of lowland areas ( Habili et al. 1997).