Interspecific competition (IC) is often seen as a main driver of evolutionary patterns and community structure. Bats might compete for key resources, and cases of exaggerated divergence of resource‐related characters or trait overdispersion in bat assemblages are often explained in terms of current or past interspecific competition. However, other pressures leading to patterns that mimic the outcome of competition cannot always be ruled out. We present the state of knowledge on IC among bats, providing a critical evaluation of the information available and identifying open questions and challenges. We reviewed 100 documents addressing potential or actual IC in bats and categorised them in terms of the resource for which bats compete (food, foraging habitat, roosts, water, and acoustic space). We also examined the ecomorphological and behavioural traits considered therein to highlight responses to IC or niche partitioning. We found that: although resources should be limiting in order for competition to occur, this is seldom tested; sympatry is sometimes taken as synonymous of syntopy (yet sympatric species that are not syntopic will never experience competition); comparisons between sympatry and allopatry are rare; and testing of objective criteria exploring the existence of niche partitioning or character displacement is not commonly adopted. While morphological examination of food remains in droppings has often led to coarse‐grained analysis that proved insufficient to establish the occurrence of food niche overlap or partitioning, new frontiers are being opened by state‐of‐the‐art molecular dietary analysis. A better understanding of IC in bats is paramount, since distributional changes leading to novel bat assemblages driven by climate change are already taking place, and the dramatic decline in insect availability, as well as the global loss or alteration of foraging habitat, may generate new competitive interactions or exacerbate existing interactions in the Anthropocene, and into the future.

中文翻译：

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蝙蝠种间竞争：知识现状和研究挑战

种间竞争 (IC) 通常被视为进化模式和群落结构的主要驱动力。蝙蝠可能会争夺关键资源，而蝙蝠组合中资源相关性状的过度分化或性状过度分散的情况通常可以用当前或过去的种间竞争来解释。然而，不能总是排除导致模仿竞争结果的模式的其他压力。我们介绍了蝙蝠之间关于 IC 的知识状态，对可用信息进行了批判性评估，并确定了悬而未决的问题和挑战。我们审查了 100 份关于蝙蝠潜在或实际 IC 的文件，并根据蝙蝠竞争的资源（食物、觅食栖息地、栖息地、水和声学空间）对它们进行了分类。我们还检查了其中考虑的生态形态和行为特征，以突出对 IC 或生态位分区的反应。我们发现：虽然为了竞争的发生应该限制资源，但这很少被测试；sympatry 有时被视为同义的同义词（但非同域的同域物种永远不会经历竞争）；同情和异域之间的比较很少见；并且通常不采用客观标准的测试来探索生态位分区或字符位移的存在。虽然粪便中食物残留的形态学检查经常导致粗粒度分析，证明不足以确定食物生态位重叠或分区的发生，但最先进的分子膳食分析正在开辟新的领域。