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Habitat loss and forest fragmentation are currently substantially reducing the availability of natural bat roosts worldwide. However, since bat populations have been recognized as important ecosystem service providers, bat boxes have become one of the most popular measures employed to protect them. Evidence exists that in arid regions bat boxes act as ecological traps due to abrupt rises in summer temperatures. Several reported mortality events highlight the lack of appropriate guidelines in temperate areas, which might be putting bat conservation in jeopardy. We aimed to explore which bat box features might cause mortality so we compare temperatures in bat boxes, modelling the influence of the orientation and model, and quantifying the risk of extreme heat episodes. A total of 797 overheating events were recorded during a bat-box monitoring program in Catalunya (2014–2015). In 2016, we …