Mitrani Department of Desert Ecology, Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Midreshet Ben-Gurion, Israel.
Section for Evolutionary Genomics, Natural History Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Mol Ecol. 2020 Mar;29(6):1185-1198. doi: 10.1111/mec.15393. Epub 2020 Mar 10.
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.
保护生物学防治（CBC）旨在通过提高天敌的效率来最小化农业害虫的有害影响。尽管有文件记载食虫蝙蝠有消耗害虫的潜力，但许多适应人类生活的蝙蝠物种仍然被低估为有益物种。我们研究了常见的适应人类生活的食虫蝙蝠——库氏管鼻蝠（Pipistrellus kuhlii）的饮食，以确定它是否可以在 CBC 中作为天敌发挥作用。我们在以色列地中海农业生态系统中，从靠近棉田的五个栖息地收集了库氏管鼻蝠的粪便样本，并在整个棉花种植季节进行了收集，然后使用 DNA 代谢组学进行了分析。此外，还收集了有关主要棉花害虫估计数量的数据。我们发现，P. kuhlii 的饮食根据地点和日期而有显著差异，包括 27 种农业害虫，这些害虫在 77.2%的样本中被发现，包括具有关键经济意义的害虫。主要猎物是广泛分布的棉花害虫——粉斑螟（Pectinophora gossypiella），在 31%的样本和所有栖息地中都有发现。粉斑螟的数量与它在蝙蝠饮食中的出现呈正相关。此外，随着粉斑螟在饮食中出现频率的增加，蝙蝠的饮食广度变窄，而时间上的饮食重叠增加。这表明 P. kuhlii 通过机会性取食来利用粉斑螟的爆发。我们认为，适应人类生活的蝙蝠提供了重要的害虫抑制服务，可能作为棉花害虫的 CBC 代理发挥作用，并可能有助于抑制其饮食中经常出现的其他有害节肢动物。
