Long-term monitoring of a population of greater horseshoe bat emphasises the importance of a pest beetle prey on demographic trends.

ABSTRACT: The global decline in insect biomass has far-reaching implications for terrestrial and freshwater food webs, impacting species reliant on insects as a crucial component of their diet. This issue extends to species traditionally considered agricultural pests, such as the common cockchafer Melolontha melolontha. In the race to combat cockchafers through collection, insecticide use, and other control methods, the repercussions of their numerical fluctuations on predators, including species of high conservation importance like bats, have been largely overlooked. Drawing on 31-years of monitoring data for a greater horseshoe bat Rhinolophus ferrumequinum population in the Aosta Valley (Western Italian Alps), we investigated whether annual fluctuations in bat counts are influenced

SUBMITTER: Mammola S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11439492 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature