Dietary Composition, Resource Partitioning and Trophic Niche Overlap in Three Forest Foliage-Gleaning Bats in Central Europe

Andreas, Michal; Reiter, Antonín; Benda, Petr

doi:10.3161/150811012x661657

Cited by 27 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…It is regarded as a gleaning species. Its diet consists of a number of non–flying arthropods, such as spiders and harvestmen, the capture of whose may involve collisions with obstacles [35–38]. In our study, Natterer’s bat had the highest number of injuries to the plagiopatagium.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 77%

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Frequent or scarce? Damage to flight–enabling body parts in bats (Chiroptera)

et al. 2019

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Bat wings are characterized by high endurance, and these mammals have developed a number of adaptations that protect them from falling into obstacles and potential injuries. However, in bat populations, there are individuals with visible fresh or healed injuries to the flight–enabling body parts. The aim of this research was to determine the differences in the occurrence of wing membrane damages among species of bats that differ in ecology and behavior. The study was conducted in southern and western Poland in the years 2000–2016 and included 3,525 individuals of six species: lesser horseshoe bat Rhinolopus hipposideros , Daubenton’s bat Myotis daubentonii , Natterer’s bat Myotis nattereri , greater mouse–eared bat Myotis myotis , western barbastelle Barbastella barbastellus , and brown long–eared bat Plecotus auritus . In all, 2.9% of the bats studied showed damage to the flight–enabling body parts. Natterer’s bat was the species with the highest number of injured individuals (21.74%). The lowest number of injured individuals (0.3%) was found in the brown long–eared bat. The most frequently observed type of damage was loss of an edge of the wing membrane (29.3%). The bat species studied differed significantly in the occurrence and location of flight enabling body parts damages. Certain behavioral and ecological factors like foraging mode, foraging habitats and habitat types of bat species determine the number of wing and tail membrane damages.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 77%

“…The diet of the lesser horseshoe bat and the brown long–eared bat consists mainly of dipterans and lepidoptera [40] and lepidoptera [38], respectively. The proportion of arthropods collected by gleaning is lower than that collected by other foraging techniques and only complements the diet.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Frequent or scarce? Damage to flight–enabling body parts in bats (Chiroptera)

et al. 2019

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“…Daubenton's bats hunt above water, and there is no evidence for foraging during winter (Flavin, Biggane, Shiel, Smiddy, & Fairley, 2001;Kokurewicz, 2004;Siemers, Dietz, Nill, & Schnitzler, 2001). In contrast, Natterer's bats glean arthropods from surfaces (Andreas, Reiter, & Benda, 2012;Siemers, Kriner, Kaipf, Simon, & Greif, 2012;Siemers & Schnitzler, 2000) and radio-tracking data suggest that they feed during hibernation period (Hope et al, 2014). Due to high site fidelity with respect to hibernacula in both of our study species (Steffens, Zöphel, & Brockmann, 2004), we were able to follow individuals over a substantial part of their life and to quantify seasonal survival over several years.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Differences in seasonal survival suggest species‐specific reactions to climate change in two sympatric bat species

Reusch

Gampe

Scheuerlein

et al. 2019

Ecology and Evolution

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Long‐lived animals with a low annual reproductive output need a long time to recover from population crashes and are, thus, likely to face high extinction risk, if the current global environmental change will increase mortality rates. To aid conservation of those species, knowledge on the variability of mortality rates is essential. Unfortunately, however, individual‐based multiyear data sets that are required for that have only rarely been collected for free‐ranging long‐lived mammals. Here, we used a five‐year data set comprising activity data of 1,445 RFID‐tagged individuals of two long‐lived temperate zone bat species, Natterer's bats ( Myotis nattereri ) and Daubenton's bats ( Myotis daubentonii ), at their joint hibernaculum. Both species are listed as being of high conservation interest by the European Habitats Directive. Applying mixed‐effects logistic regression, we explored seasonal survival differences in these two species which differ in foraging strategy and phenology. In both species, survival over the first winter of an individual's life was much lower than survival over subsequent winters. Focussing on adults only, seasonal survival patterns were largely consistent with higher winter and lower summer survival but varied in its level across years in both species. Our analyses, furthermore, highlight the importance of species‐specific time periods for survival. Daubenton's bats showed a much stronger difference in survival between the two seasons than Natterer's bats. In one exceptional winter, the population of Natterer's bats crashed, while the survival of Daubenton's bats declined only moderately. While our results confirm the general seasonal survival pattern typical for hibernating mammals with higher winter than summer survival, they also show that this pattern can be reversed under particular conditions. Overall, our study points toward a high importance of specific time periods for population dynamics and suggests species‐, population‐, and age class‐specific responses to global climate change.

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“…Before HTS, traditional methods of diet analysis of bat guano were based on morphological identification of macroscopic prey remains and relied on expert knowledge of invertebrate anatomy and diversity. Hence the taxonomic resolution was often limited to the order or family level [26–30]. With molecular methods of identification, the trophic ecology of these mammals can be characterized with much higher resolution across numerous samples [31–34], potentially unravelling overlooked dietary diversity, or identifying resource partitioning between species that was missed by traditional approaches [35].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The menu varies with metabarcoding practices: A case study with the bat Plecotus auritus

et al. 2019

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Metabarcoding of feces has revolutionized the knowledge of animal diets by providing unprecedented resolution of consumed resources. However, it is still unclear how different methodological approaches influence the ecological conclusions that can be drawn from such data. Here, we propose a critical evaluation of several data treatments on the inferred diet of the bat Plecotus auritus using guano regularly collected from various colonies throughout the entire active season. First and unlike previous claims, our data indicates that DNA extracted from large amounts of fecal material issued from guano accumulates yield broader taxonomic diversity of prey than smaller numbers of pellets would do, provided that extraction buffer volumes are adapted to such increased amounts of material. Second, trophic niche analyses based on prey occurrence data uncover strong seasonality in the bat’s diet and major differences among neighboring maternity colonies. Third, while the removal of rare prey items is not always warranted as it introduces biases affecting particularly samples with greater prey species richness. Fourth, examination of distinct taxonomic depths in diet analyses highlights different aspects of food consumption providing a better understanding of the consumer’s diet. Finally, the biologically meaningful patterns recovered with presence-absence approaches are virtually lost when attempting to quantify prey consumed using relative read abundances. Even in an ideal situation where reference barcodes are available for most potential prey species, inferring realistic patterns of prey consumption remains relatively challenging. Although best practice in metabarcoding analyses will depend on the aims of the study, several previous methodological recommendations seem unwarranted for studying such diverse diets as that of brown long-eared bats.

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Dietary Composition, Resource Partitioning and Trophic Niche Overlap in Three Forest Foliage-Gleaning Bats in Central Europe

Cited by 27 publications

References 24 publications

Frequent or scarce? Damage to flight–enabling body parts in bats (Chiroptera)

Frequent or scarce? Damage to flight–enabling body parts in bats (Chiroptera)

Differences in seasonal survival suggest species‐specific reactions to climate change in two sympatric bat species

The menu varies with metabarcoding practices: A case study with the bat Plecotus auritus

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