Bat communities in the Neotropics are some of the most speciose assemblages of mammals on Earth, with regions supporting more than 100 sympatric species with diverse feeding ecologies. Because bats are small, nocturnal, and volant, it is difficult to directly observe their feeding habits, which has resulted in their classification into broadly defined dietary guilds (e.g., insectivores, carnivores, and frugivores). Apart from these broad guilds, we lack detailed dietary information for many species and therefore have only a limited understanding of interaction networks linking bats and their diet items. In this study, we used DNA metabarcoding of plants, arthropods, and vertebrates to investigate the diets of 25 bat species from the tropical dry forests of Lamanai, Belize. Our results report some of the first detection of diet items for the focal bat taxa, adding rich and novel natural history information to the field of bat ecology. This study represents a comprehensive first effort to apply DNA metabarcoding to bat diets at Lamanai and provides a useful methodological framework for future studies testing hypotheses about coexistence and niche differentiation in the context of modern high-throughput molecular data.

中文翻译：

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基于粪便DNA元条形码的新热带蝙蝠的分子饮食分析

新热带地区的蝙蝠群落是地球上最特殊的哺乳动物群落之一，该地区支持 100 多种具有不同觅食生态的同域物种。由于蝙蝠体型小、夜间活动且易翻身，因此很难直接观察它们的摄食习性，这导致它们被划分为广泛定义的饮食类群（例如，食虫动物、食肉动物和食果动物）。除了这些广泛的行会外，我们还缺乏许多物种的详细饮食信息，因此对连接蝙蝠及其饮食项目的交互网络的了解有限。在这项研究中，我们使用植物、节肢动物和脊椎动物的 DNA 元条形码来研究来自伯利兹拉马奈热带干旱森林的 25 种蝙蝠的饮食。我们的结果报告了一些首次发现的焦点蝙蝠类群的饮食项目，为蝙蝠生态学领域增加了丰富而新颖的自然历史信息。这项研究代表了在 Lamanai 将 DNA 元条形码应用于蝙蝠饮食的首次全面努力，并为未来的研究提供了有用的方法学框架，以在现代高通量分子数据的背景下测试关于共存和生态位分化的假设。