Molecular diet analysis of neotropical bats based on fecal DNA metabarcoding

Abstract

Bat communities in the Neotropics are some of the most speciose assemblages of mammals on Earth, with regions supporting more than 100 sympatric species with diverse feeding ecologies. Because bats are small, nocturnal, and volant, it is difficult to directly observe their feeding habits, which has resulted in their classification into broadly defined dietary guilds (e.g., insectivores, carnivores, and frugivores). Apart from these broad guilds, we lack detailed dietary information for many species and therefore have only a limited understanding of interaction networks linking bats and their diet items. In this study, we used DNA metabarcoding of plants, arthropods, and vertebrates to investigate the diets of 25 bat species from the tropical dry forests of Lamanai, Belize. Our results report some of the first detection of diet items for the focal bat taxa, adding rich and novel natural history information to the field of bat ecology. This study represents a comprehensive first effort to apply DNA metabarcoding to bat diets at Lamanai and provides a useful methodological framework for future studies testing hypotheses about coexistence and niche differentiation in the context of modern high‐throughput molecular data.

Could species‐focused suppression of Aedes aegypti, the yellow fever mosquito, and Aedes albopictus, the tiger mosquito, affect interacting predators? An evidence synthesis from the literature

“…Similar was found for these species in a different part of their range in Wisconsin, USA 161 . A recent study using metabarcoding of bat fecal DNA in Belize echoes this insectivorous generalism, with dipterans making up a small proportion of the diet of insectivorous bats, and within the dipterans few were found to be Culicidae 162 …”

“…161 A recent study using metabarcoding of bat fecal DNA in Belize echoes this insectivorous generalism, with dipterans making up a small proportion of the diet of insectivorous bats, and within the dipterans few were found to be Culicidae. 162 A dietary study of four species of urban-roosting bats in three Brazilian cities is particularly pertinent and indicates that the bats forage largely on agricultural pests in areas just outside the city. Of the five species for which fecal samples were barcoded, three, Nyctinomops laticaudatus, Molossus molossus and Eumops perotis, were found to have consumed Culicidae in a total of 6/43 samples sequenced.…”

You are more than what you eat: potentially adaptive enrichment of microbiome functions across bat dietary niches

“…This classification scheme was based on a thorough review of recent literature, taking into account newer diet studies that have overturned or expanded previous assumptions about host diet [e.g., 25 , 26 ]. Still, many species do not fit neatly into dietary guilds because their feeding habits vary seasonally during breeding or in response to resource availability [ 33 , 40 , 54 – 55 ]. We therefore collected species-level foraging information from the EltonTraits database [ 56 ].…”

Vertebrates but not ants protect rainforest trees from herbivorous insects along an elevational gradient in Papua New Guinea

“…Bats and birds, and to a lesser extent insectivorous vertebrate, consume large quantities of insects and other arthropods (Kalka and Kalko 2006, Mooney, et al 2010, Nyffeler, et al 2018). They are likely to act as intraguild predators, feeding both on predatory as well as herbivorous arthropods (Ingala, et al 2021, Karp and Daily 2014, Milne, et al 2016, Sam, et al 2017). The impact of ubiquitous insectivorous birds on lower trophic levels was shown in some but not all studies (Mooney, et al 2010, Van Bael, et al 2008).…”