Bat aggregational response to pest caterpillar emergence
Moths (Lepidoptera) are major agricultural and forest pests in many parts of the world, including Europe, with many causing great economic damage to crops, horticultural plants, stored items, and wool products. Here, we focus on two ecologically similar inchworms, Operophtera brumata and Erannis def...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:8249614 2023-05-15T17:13:46+02:00 Bat aggregational response to pest caterpillar emergence Blažek, Ján Konečný, Adam Bartonička, Tomáš 2021-07-01 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8249614/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34211071 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-93104-z en eng Nature Publishing Group UK http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8249614/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34211071 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-93104-z © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . CC-BY Sci Rep Article Text 2021 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-93104-z 2021-07-11T00:30:02Z Moths (Lepidoptera) are major agricultural and forest pests in many parts of the world, including Europe, with many causing great economic damage to crops, horticultural plants, stored items, and wool products. Here, we focus on two ecologically similar inchworms, Operophtera brumata and Erannis defoliaria, known for their high foliage consumption during the spring emergence of caterpillars. We hypothesise that bats could play a role in reducing pests such as caterpillars by switching to this abundant emerging prey. At two infested and one control forest sites, caterpillars were sampled during spring to determine levels of infestation. At the same time, bat flight activity was monitored during the peak in caterpillar abundance. During the spring caterpillar outbreak, we collected faecal samples of forest-dwelling bats capable of using gleaning. The majority of samples were positive for our focus species, being 51.85% for O. brumata and 29.63% for E. defoliaria faecal samples. The foraging activity of two gleaning bats, Myotis nattereri and Myotis bechsteinii, increased at both infested sites, but not at the control site, during caterpillar emergence, as did foraging of Plecotus auritus/austriacus, which used both gleaning and aerial hawking. We conclude that both specialists and occasional gleaners, which prefer different prey but are able to switch their foraging strategies, aggregate at sites during pest emergence and, as such, our results confirm the high potential of bats to reduce numbers of pest species such as caterpillars. Text Myotis nattereri PubMed Central (PMC) Scientific Reports 11 1 |
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Article Blažek, Ján Konečný, Adam Bartonička, Tomáš Bat aggregational response to pest caterpillar emergence |
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Moths (Lepidoptera) are major agricultural and forest pests in many parts of the world, including Europe, with many causing great economic damage to crops, horticultural plants, stored items, and wool products. Here, we focus on two ecologically similar inchworms, Operophtera brumata and Erannis defoliaria, known for their high foliage consumption during the spring emergence of caterpillars. We hypothesise that bats could play a role in reducing pests such as caterpillars by switching to this abundant emerging prey. At two infested and one control forest sites, caterpillars were sampled during spring to determine levels of infestation. At the same time, bat flight activity was monitored during the peak in caterpillar abundance. During the spring caterpillar outbreak, we collected faecal samples of forest-dwelling bats capable of using gleaning. The majority of samples were positive for our focus species, being 51.85% for O. brumata and 29.63% for E. defoliaria faecal samples. The foraging activity of two gleaning bats, Myotis nattereri and Myotis bechsteinii, increased at both infested sites, but not at the control site, during caterpillar emergence, as did foraging of Plecotus auritus/austriacus, which used both gleaning and aerial hawking. We conclude that both specialists and occasional gleaners, which prefer different prey but are able to switch their foraging strategies, aggregate at sites during pest emergence and, as such, our results confirm the high potential of bats to reduce numbers of pest species such as caterpillars. |
format |
Text |
author |
Blažek, Ján Konečný, Adam Bartonička, Tomáš |
author_facet |
Blažek, Ján Konečný, Adam Bartonička, Tomáš |
author_sort |
Blažek, Ján |
title |
Bat aggregational response to pest caterpillar emergence |
title_short |
Bat aggregational response to pest caterpillar emergence |
title_full |
Bat aggregational response to pest caterpillar emergence |
title_fullStr |
Bat aggregational response to pest caterpillar emergence |
title_full_unstemmed |
Bat aggregational response to pest caterpillar emergence |
title_sort |
bat aggregational response to pest caterpillar emergence |
publisher |
Nature Publishing Group UK |
publishDate |
2021 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8249614/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34211071 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-93104-z |
genre |
Myotis nattereri |
genre_facet |
Myotis nattereri |
op_source |
Sci Rep |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8249614/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34211071 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-93104-z |
op_rights |
© The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
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CC-BY |
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https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-93104-z |
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Scientific Reports |
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11 |
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