Gaining ecological insight on dietary allocation among horseshoe bats through molecular primer combination
Gaining ecological insight on dietary allocation among horseshoe bats through molecular primer combination
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DOI：
10.1371/journal.pone.0220081
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发表时间：
2019-07-24
期刊：
影响因子：
3.7
通讯作者：
Aihartza, Joxerra
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Aldasoro, Miren;Garin, Inazio;Aihartza, Joxerra
捕食者和猎物之间的营养相互作用的知识是重要的，以了解生态和动物的行为。传统的食虫蝙蝠的饮食组成的研究一直是基于猎物遗体的形态鉴定，但由于方法的局限性，结果的准确性受到阻碍。最近，DNA元条形码和高重复序列测序（HTS）技术已经改变了场景，因为它们允许在物种水平上识别猎物，最终使结果更加精确。然而，使用一个单一的引物组扩增粪便DNA产生的偏差，在评估的饮食组成。三种蹄蝠在欧洲的分布范围有很大的重叠：菊头蝠、菊头蝠R. hipposideros和R.铁甲喹。为了更深入地了解它们的猎物名单，我们结合了两种不同的引物。结果表明，所用引物在目和种的水平上是互补的，135种猎物中只有22种被两种引物扩增。最常见的猎物R.蹄蝠属双翅目和鳞翅目，在R. euryale、鳞翅目、双翅目和鞘翅目的R.铁甲喹。这三种蝙蝠的营养生态位重叠不超过34%，显示出显著的资源分配。我们的研究结果证实了互补引物相结合的重要性，以描述多面手食虫蝙蝠与扩增子元编码技术的饮食。总体而言，每个引物组显示了一个子集的猎物组成，与一小部分的总猎物被确定由他们两个。因此，每个引物提出了一个不同的图片之间的生态位重叠的三个马蹄蝠，由于它们的分类亲和力。
Knowledge on the trophic interactions among predators and their prey is important in order to understand ecology and behaviour of animals. Traditionally studies on the diet composition of insectivorous bats have been based on the morphological identification of prey remains, but the accuracy of the results has been hampered due to methodological limitations. Lately, the DNA metabarcoding and High Throughput Sequencing (HTS) techniques have changed the scene since they allows prey identification to the species level, ultimately giving more precision to the results. Nevertheless, the use of one single primer set to amplify faecal DNA produces biases in the assessed dietary composition. Three horseshoe bats overlap extensively in their distribution range in Europe: Rhinolophus euryale, R. hipposideros and R. ferrumequinum. In order to achieve the deepest insight on their prey list we combined two different primers. Results showed that the used primers were complementary at the order and species levels, only 22 out of 135 prey species being amplified by both. The most frequent prey of R. hipposideros belonged to Diptera and Lepidoptera, to Lepidoptera in R. euryale, and Lepidoptera, Diptera and Coleoptera in R. ferrumequinum. The three bats show significant resource partitioning, since their trophic niche overlap is not higher than 34%. Our results confirm the importance of combining complementary primers to describe the diet of generalist insectivorous bats with amplicon metabarcoding techniques. Overall, each primer set showed a subset of the prey composition, with a small portion of the total prey being identified by both of them. Therefore, each primer presented a different picture of the niche overlap among the three horseshoe bats due to their taxonomic affinity.