Amy K. Wray, Marcus Z. Peery, Jade M. Kochanski, Emma Pelton, Daniel L. Lindner, Claudio Gratton
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
In North America, white-nose syndrome (WNS) has caused precipitous declines in hibernating bat populations, raising the question of whether the rapid loss of arthropodivorous bats may affect the abundance of their prey. During the summers of 2015–2018 (1 year after the arrival of WNS in Wisconsin, USA), we performed intensive arthropod black-light trapping, ultrasonic acoustic monitoring, and emergence counts at 10 little brown (Myotis lucifugus) and big brown (Eptesicus fuscus) bat maternity roosts with paired control sites. For little brown bats, which are severely affected by WNS, roost counts declined by 95% over the four-year period, compared to a 38% decline in big brown bat roost counts. Total arthropod abundance decreased by 49%, although decreases among common little brown bat prey were less severe. Our natural predator exclusion experiment supports existing evidence that bats can have measurable trophic impacts on arthropod communities, primarily via top-down effects on common prey.
期刊介绍:
Ecology Letters serves as a platform for the rapid publication of innovative research in ecology. It considers manuscripts across all taxa, biomes, and geographic regions, prioritizing papers that investigate clearly stated hypotheses. The journal publishes concise papers of high originality and general interest, contributing to new developments in ecology. Purely descriptive papers and those that only confirm or extend previous results are discouraged.