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，很少有研究试图描述这些服务和好处，由于昆虫猎物识别的困难和缺乏信息的蝙蝠利用农业景观。该项目整合了这些组件来描述昆虫和蝙蝠在得克萨斯州的山核桃果园内的生态关系。更具体地说，这项研究将测试蝙蝠有助于抑制几种损害山核桃作物的夜间害虫的假设。利用尖端技术，这项研究将使用蝙蝠粪便中的DNA来非常准确地识别不同种类的蝙蝠正在吃什么。这项研究将解决基本的生态问题，例如蝙蝠物种之间对猎物资源的不同使用。例如，我们预测，在蝙蝠饮食中检测到的农业害虫物种的总数将增加更多的蝙蝠物种被纳入分析，反映蝙蝠物种之间的饮食变化，展示蝙蝠提供给土地所有者的生态系统服务可能会导致更多的采用可持续农业实践，减少害虫管理的成本，并增强蝙蝠栖息地的私人土地。这项研究的结果将被纳入得克萨斯州综合害虫管理（IPM）计划的山核桃，并将分发给山核桃种植者的形式介绍会议，信息小册子，并在得克萨斯州A M出版物（无论是在印刷和在线）。在过去的三年里，当地的山核桃种植者一直积极参与这一项目，并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讲习班。

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.