title: The diet of Myotis lucifugus across Canada: assessing foraging quality and diet variability.
abstract: Variation in prey resources influences the diet and behaviour of predators. When prey become limiting, predators may travel farther to find preferred food or adjust to existing local resources. When predators are habitat limited, local resource abundance impacts foraging success. We analysed the diet of Myotis lucifugus (little brown bats) from Nova Scotia (eastern Canada) to the Northwest Territories (north-western Canada). This distribution includes extremes of season length and temperature and encompasses colonies on rural monoculture farms, and in urban and unmodified areas. We recognized nearly 600 distinct species of prey, of which ≈30% could be identified using reference sequence libraries. We found a higher than expected use of lepidopterans, which comprised a range of dietary richness from ≈35% early in the summer to ≈55% by late summer. Diptera were the second largest prey group consumed, representing ≈45% of dietary diversity early in the summer. We observed extreme local dietary variability and variation among seasons and years. Based on the species of insects that were consumed, we observed that two locations support prey species with extremely low pollution and acidification tolerances, suggesting that these are areas without environmental contamination. We conclude that there is significant local population variability in little brown bat diet that is likely driven by seasonal and geographical changes in insect diversity, and that this prey may be a good indicator of environment quality.
authors.affiliation: School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS, UK.
authors.forename: Elizabeth L
authors.initials: EL
authors.lastname: Clare
authors.forename: William O C
authors.initials: WO
authors.lastname: Symondson
authors.forename: Hugh
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Broders
authors.forename: François
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Fabianek
authors.forename: Erin E
authors.initials: EE
authors.lastname: Fraser
authors.forename: Alistair
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: MacKenzie
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Boughen
authors.forename: Rachel
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Hamilton
authors.forename: Craig K R
authors.initials: CK
authors.lastname: Willis
authors.forename: Felix
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Martinez-Nuñez
authors.forename: Allyson K
authors.initials: AK
authors.lastname: Menzies
authors.forename: Kaleigh J O
authors.initials: KJ
authors.lastname: Norquay
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Brigham
authors.forename: Joseph
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Poissant
authors.forename: Jody
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Rintoul
authors.forename: Robert M R
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Barclay
authors.forename: Jesika P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Reimer
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002170:Canada; D002685:Chiroptera / Q000502:physiology*; D004032:Diet; D017753:Ecosystem; D004784:Environmental Monitoring; D007313:Insecta / Q000145:classification*; D011235:Predatory Behavior; D012621:Seasons; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D062211:Spatio-Temporal Analysis
keywords: molecular diet analysis; resource use; spatial/temporal variation; species' interactions