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.

Insectivorous bats may play a significant role in regulating populations of agricultural pests. Currently, few methods are available to enhance the activity of bats in agroecosystems. We asked whether synthetic sex pheromones, used in integrated pest management (IPM) to impede the mating success of major moth pests in vineyards and apple orchards, could also enhance the activity and richness of insectivorous bats, their natural enemies. We hypothesized that applying concentrated sex pheromones of pest moths will alter the movement patterns of male moths, indirectly affecting bat richness and activity. We compared the effect of sex pheromones on bats under two different agricultural management systems: conventional farming and IPM. We used synthetic sex pheromones of Lobesia botrana or Cydia pomonella; both are among the most destructive moth pests in vineyards and apple orchards, respectively. Using passive acoustic monitoring, we compared species richness and bat activity in plots without and with additional pheromones. In both IPM vineyards and IPM apple orchards, total bat activity and species richness significantly increased after applying the pheromone treatment, with a positive correlation between total bat activity and the numbers of moth pests in the vineyards. In conventional vineyards, bat species richness increased significantly, but not total bat activity. IPM vineyards had significantly higher species richness than conventional vineyards, both before and after the pheromone treatment. Our study shows that moth pheromone lures, commonly used as a pest control method, may also attract insectivorous bats, which in turn may further suppress the pests. These findings highlight the potential of insectivorous bats as pest control agents and call for further research directed at integrating them in IPM practices.