An appetite for pests: Synanthropic insectivorous bats exploit cotton pest irruptions and consume various deleterious arthropods

Abstract

Conservation biological control (CBC) seeks to minimize the deleterious effects of agricultural pests by enhancing the efficiency of natural enemies. Despite the documented potential of insectivorous bats to consume pests, many synanthropic bat species are still underappreciated as beneficial species. We investigated the diet of Kuhl's pipistrelle (Pipistrellus kuhlii), a common synanthropic insectivorous bat that forages in urban and agricultural areas, to determine whether it may function as a natural enemy in CBC. Faecal samples of P. kuhlii were collected throughout the cotton‐growing season from five roost sites near cotton fields located in a Mediterranean agroecosystem, Israel, and analyzed using DNA metabarcoding. Additionally, data on estimated abundance of major cotton pests were collected. We found that the diet of P. kuhlii significantly varied according to sites and dates and comprised 27 species of agricultural pests that were found in 77.2% of the samples, including pests of key economic concern. The dominant prey was the widespread cotton pest, the pink bollworm, Pectinophora gossypiella, found in 31% of the samples and in all the roosts. Pink bollworm abundance was positively correlated with its occurrence in the bat diet. Furthermore, the bats’ dietary breadth narrowed, while temporal dietary overlap increased, in relation to increasing frequencies of pink bollworms in the diet. This suggests that P. kuhlii exploits pink bollworm irruptions by opportunistic feeding. We suggest that synanthropic bats provide important pest suppression services, may function as CBC agents of cotton pests and potentially contribute to suppress additional deleterious arthropods found in their diet in high frequencies.

eDNA metabarcoding reveals a core and secondary diets of the greater horseshoe bat with strong spatio‐temporal plasticity

“…Our results support a growing literature illustrating the potential role of insectivorous bats in arthropod pest control (Aizpurua et al., 2018; Cohen et al., 2020; Kolkert et al., 2020). Some large and/or chitinized pests had already been identified in previous R. ferrumequinum diet studies, such as the Coleoptera Serica brunnea and Melolontha melolontha or the Diptera Tipula maxima (Aldasoro et al., 2019; Galan et al., 2018; Jones, 1990).…”

“…However, no study has described as many deleterious or potentially deleterious insect species (one third of all occurrences) in the R. ferrumequinum diet. Thus our results confirmed that R. ferrumequinum may be not only be important as a sentinel of agricultural insect pests (chirosurveillance) but also as an efficient agent of pest control (Cohen et al., 2020; Maslo et al., 2017; Weier et al., 2019). This role may not only be important in the future because climate change is expected to favor the establishment and proliferation of many deleterious insects (Trumble & Butler, 2009).…”

“…This role may not only be important in the future because climate change is expected to favor the establishment and proliferation of many deleterious insects (Trumble & Butler, 2009). Our results also provide evidence of the presence of arthropods beneficial to agriculture ( i.e., natural enemy of pests) in the insectivorous bat diet (Cohen et al., 2020; Kolkert et al., 2020). Beneficial arthropods are rarely addressed in bat diet literature, probably because of the scarcity of detailed databases, but it is likely that insectivorous bats eat both pests and beneficial arthropods.…”

Mapping the pressure of natural predators on pest arthropods

“…We use our newly developed methodological framework to estimate the predation pressure of an assemblage of natural predators, namely bats, on crop-damaging arthropods at the European scale. The widespread consumption of pest arthropods by European insectivorous bats we report expands the taxonomic and geographic breadth of similar previous observations (Aizpuruaet al 2018;Cohen et al 2020). Crop-damaging arthropods are not only consumed by species that mainly forage in open areas, but pest consumption is widespread across bats with different ecological features.…”

Methodological trends and perspectives of animal dietary studies by noninvasive fecal DNA metabarcoding

“…Gel electrophoresis or capillary electrophoresis has commonly been used to check for PCR amplification success, and samples that do not show clear bands could be removed. Recently, quantitative PCR (qPCR) screening has been used in several fecal metabarcoding studies (Alberdi et al., 2018; Berry et al., 2017; Bohmann et al., 2018; Burgar et al., 2014; Cohen, Bar‐David, Nielsen, Bohmann, & Korine, 2020; Groom et al., 2017; Murray, Coghlan, & Bunce, 2015; Schnell, Bohmann, & Gilbert, 2015). Murray et al.…”