DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Bats, Bugs and Pecans: Using Next-Generation Pyrosequencing to Evaluate Ecosystem Services of Insectivorous Bats

食虫蝙蝠被认为通过抑制害虫在农业系统中提供重要的生态系统服务和经济效益。然而，由于难以识别昆虫猎物和缺乏关于蝙蝠利用农业景观的信息，很少有研究试图描述这些服务和利益。该项目整合了这些组成部分，以描述德克萨斯州山核桃果园中昆虫和蝙蝠之间的生态关系。更具体地说，这项研究将验证蝙蝠有助于抑制几种破坏山核桃作物的夜间害虫的假设。利用尖端技术，这项研究将利用蝙蝠粪便中的DNA来非常准确地识别不同种类的蝙蝠在吃什么。这项研究将解决基本的生态学问题，例如不同种类蝙蝠对猎物资源的不同利用。例如，我们预测，随着更多蝙蝠物种被纳入分析，在蝙蝠饮食中检测到的农业害虫物种总数将会增加，这反映了蝙蝠物种之间饮食的差异。展示蝙蝠为土地所有者提供的生态系统服务可能会导致更多地采用可持续农业做法，降低有害生物管理成本，并改善私人土地上的蝙蝠栖息地。这项研究的结果将被纳入德州山核桃有害生物综合管理（IPM）计划，并将以会议报告、信息小册子和德州农工学会出版物（印刷和在线）的形式分发给山核桃种植者。在过去的三年里，当地的山核桃种植者一直积极参与这个项目，在德克萨斯州和马萨诸塞州的学校举办了关于蝙蝠和农业的教育研讨会。

Insect-eating bats are thought to provide important ecosystem services and economic benefits in agricultural systems through suppression of insect pests. Few studies, however, have attempted to describe these services and benefits, due to difficulties in identification of insect prey and lack of information on the use of agricultural landscapes by bats. This project integrates these components to describe ecological relationships between insects and bats within pecan orchards in Texas. More specifically, the research will test the hypothesis that bats contribute to the suppression of several nocturnal pests that damage pecan crops. Harnessing cutting-edge techniques, this study will use DNA from bat guano to identify with great accuracy what different species of bats are eating. The research will address fundamental ecological questions, such as the differential use of prey resources between species of bats. For example, we predict that the total number of agricultural pest species detected in bat diets will increase as more bat species are included in the analysis, reflecting variation in diet among bat species.Demonstrating the ecosystem services provided by bats to landowners may lead to increased adoption of sustainable agriculture practices, reduced costs of pest management, and enhancement of bat habitat on private land. The results of this study will be incorporated into the Texas Integrated Pest Management (IPM) program for pecans and will be distributed to pecan growers in the form of presentations at conferences, informational pamphlets, and in Texas A&M publications (both in print and online). Over the past three years, local pecan growers have been actively engaged in this project and educational workshops about bats and agriculture have been presented in Texas and Massachusetts schools.