Bats from different foraging guilds prey upon the pine processionary moth.

ABSTRACT: Outbreaks of the processionary moth Thaumetopoea pityocampa (Denis & Schiffermüller, 1775), a forest pest from the Palearctic, are thought to induce a behavioral response of bats, but up to now the moth has been seldom identified as bats' prey. Studies on bat diets suggest moths with cyclical outbreaks attract a wide array of bat species from different foraging guilds. We test whether bats feed upon T. pityocampa in the Iberian Peninsula irrespective of the predator's ecological and morphological features. We found that seven out of ten bat species belonging to different foraging guilds contained T. pityocampa DNA in their faeces and no difference was found in the foraging frequency among foraging guilds. A different size of the typical prey or the lack of fondness for

SUBMITTER: Garin I 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6613530 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature