Across its broad geographic range, Myotis mystacinus exploits a broad range of habitats, including forests, riparian ecosystems, grasslands, shrublands, agricultural lands, and even deserts. In the south of its European range, it is mostly a forest species (reviewed in Budinski and López-Baucells 2022).

The species often hunts on the wing and feeds on Diptera, Lepidoptera and Hymenoptera, but may also glean spiders and beetles (reviewed in Budinski and López-Baucells 2022). Generally sedentary, its movements rarely exceed 100 km, but exceptionally long movements – up to 600 km) have been recorded (Hutterer et al. 2005). In summer, Myotis mystacinus’ nurseries (made of up to 60 bats, only rarely numbering several hundred) use many roost types such as trees, buildings, rock crevices, bird and bat boxes, or narrow spaces in buildings and other human-made structures. Mating occurs at swarming sites or during hibernation, which takes place in underground roosts (Budinski and López-Baucells 2022).

The Whiskered Bat (Myotis mystacinus) is one of the four cryptic bat species currently recognised in Europe within the “whiskered bats” group, along with the Brandt’s Bat Myotis brandtii (Eversmann 1845), the Alcathoe Bat Myotis alcathoe von Helversen and Heller, 2001 and the Steppe Whiskered Bat Myotis davidii (Peters 1869). The recent distinction made among the species, as well as the difficulty posed by field identification (fully confident species recognition requires molecular analysis), and the existence of hybrids, affected the detailed knowledge of these species’ current distribution (reviewed in Budinski and López-Baucells 2022).

Myotis mystacinus has a broad distribution in Europe. It occurs up to 64ºN, while southwards it extends to the northern Iberian Peninsula, Italy (including Sicily and Sardinia), and the Balkans. Hybrids between M. davidii and M. mystacinus make it difficult to establish the actual southern and eastern distributional limits. The range of altitudes where this species can be found varies between 0 and 1,920 m asl. The AOO and EOO have not been estimated, but based on the available locality records, they are expected to greatly exceed the threshold for a threatened category.

Globally, Myotis mystacinus is known in Morocco and from the Levant region, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, east to the eastern boundaries of the Russian Federation (reviewed in Budinski and López-Baucells 2022).

It is protected by national legislation in most range states. There are also international legal obligations for its protection through the Bonn Convention (Eurobats) and Bern Convention. It is included in Annex IV of the EU Habitats Directive. According to the art. 17 reporting prepared under this Directive, the species conservation status is classified as favourable in three biogeographic regions, unfavourable-bad in one region, unfavourable-inadequate in three regions, and unknown in one region. To preserve this species, it is important to protect underground and overground roosting sites as well as main foraging habitats such as forests and riparian vegetation.