The diet of Myotis lucifugus across Canada: assessing foraging quality and diet variability. ...

• Main Authors: Clare, Elizabeth L., Symondson, William O. C., Broders, Hugh, Fabianek, François, Fraser, Erin E., MacKenzie, Alistair, Boughen, Andrew, Hamilton, Rachel, Willis, Craig K. R., Martinez‐Nuñez, Felix, Menzies, Allyson K., Norquay, Kaleigh J. O., Brigham, Mark, Poissant, Joseph, Rintoul, Jody, Barclay, Robert M. R., Reimer, Jesika P.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Zenodo 2014
• Subjects: Biodiversity; Mammalia; Chiroptera; Chordata; Animalia; bats; bat; Northwest Territories
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13411552; https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.13411552

(Uploaded by Plazi for the Bat Literature Project) Abstract Variation in prey resources influences the diet and behaviour of predators. When prey become limiting, predators may travel farther to find preferred food or adjust to existing local resources. When predators are habitat limited, local resource abundance impacts foraging success. We analysed the diet of Myotis lucifugus (little brown bats) from Nova Scotia (eastern Canada) to the Northwest Territories (north‐western Canada). This distribution includes extremes of season length and temperature and encompasses colonies on rural monoculture farms, and in urban and unmodified areas. We recognized nearly 600 distinct species of prey, of which ≈30% could be identified using reference sequence libraries. We found a higher than expected use of lepidopterans, which comprised a range of dietary richness from ≈35% early in the summer to ≈55% by late summer. Diptera were the second largest prey group consumed, representing ≈45% of dietary diversity early in the ...