Conservation biological control (CBC) seeks to minimize the deleterious effects of agricultural pests by enhancing the efficiency of natural enemies. Despite the documented potential of insectivorous bats to consume pests, many synanthropic bat species are still underappreciated as beneficial species. We investigated the diet of Kuhl's pipistrelle (Pipistrellus kuhlii), a common synanthropic insectivorous bat that forages in urban and agricultural areas, to determine whether it may function as a natural enemy in CBC. Faecal samples of P. kuhlii were collected throughout the cotton‐growing season from five roost sites near cotton fields located in a Mediterranean agroecosystem, Israel, and analyzed using DNA metabarcoding. Additionally, data on estimated abundance of major cotton pests were collected. We found that the diet of P. kuhlii significantly varied according to sites and dates and comprised 27 species of agricultural pests that were found in 77.2% of the samples, including pests of key economic concern. The dominant prey was the widespread cotton pest, the pink bollworm, Pectinophora gossypiella, found in 31% of the samples and in all the roosts. Pink bollworm abundance was positively correlated with its occurrence in the bat diet. Furthermore, the bats’ dietary breadth narrowed, while temporal dietary overlap increased, in relation to increasing frequencies of pink bollworms in the diet. This suggests that P. kuhlii exploits pink bollworm irruptions by opportunistic feeding. We suggest that synanthropic bats provide important pest suppression services, may function as CBC agents of cotton pests and potentially contribute to suppress additional deleterious arthropods found in their diet in high frequencies.

中文翻译：

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有害生物的食欲：食虫蝙蝠利用棉花害虫的入侵并消耗各种有害的节肢动物。

保护生物防治（CBC）旨在通过提高天敌的效率来最大程度地减少农业害虫的有害影响。尽管有文献报道食虫蝙蝠具有消灭害虫的潜力，但许多同生蝙蝠物种仍未被充分认识为有益物种。我们调查了Kuhl的pipistrelle（Pipistrellus kuhlii）的饮食，Pipistrellus kuhlii是在城市和农业地区觅食的常见的食虫蝙蝠，以确定它是否可能成为CBC的天敌。kuhlii的粪便样本在整个棉花生长季节，从位于以色列地中海农业生态系统的棉田附近的五个栖息地收集了这些棉，并使用DNA元条形码进行了分析。此外，还收集了估计的主要棉虫数量的数据。我们发现P. kuhlii的饮食因地点和日期的不同而有很大差异，并且在27.7％的样本中发现了27种农业害虫，其中包括重要的经济隐患。占主导地位的猎物是分布广泛的棉花害虫，粉红色的棉铃虫，棉桃（Pectinophora gossypiella），在31％的样品和所有栖息地中都发现了。粉红色棉铃虫的丰度与其在蝙蝠饮食中的发生呈正相关。此外，与粉红色棉铃虫在饮食中的频率增加有关，蝙蝠的饮食宽度变窄，而时间上的饮食重叠增加。这表明P. kuhlii通过机会喂养利用了粉红色铃虫的侵染。我们建议，合蝙蝠可以提供重要的害虫抑制服务，可以作为棉花害虫的CBC剂发挥作用，并可能有助于抑制其饮食中高频率发现的其他有害节肢动物。