Bats initiate vital agroecological interactions in corn

Abstract

In agroecosystems worldwide, bats are voracious predators of crop pests and may provide services to farmers worth billions of U.S. dollars. However, such valuations make untested assumptions about the ecological effect of bats in agroecosystems. Specifically, estimates of the value of pest suppression services assume bats consume sufficient numbers of crop pests to affect impact pest reproduction and subsequent damage to crops. Corn is an essential crop for farmers, and is grown on more than 150 million hectares worldwide. Using large exclosures in corn fields, we show that bats exert sufficient pressure on crop pests to suppress larval densities and damage in this cosmopolitan crop. In addition, we show that bats suppress pest-associated fungal growth and mycotoxin in corn. We estimate the suppression of herbivory by insectivorous bats is worth more than 1 billion USD globally on this crop alone, and bats may further benefit farmers by indirectly suppressing pest-associated fungal growth and toxic compounds on corn. Bats face a variety of threats globally, but their relevance as predators of insects in ubiquitous corn-dominated landscapes underlines the economic and ecological importance of conserving biodiversity.

Bat Biology, Genomes, and the Bat1K Project: To Generate Chromosome-Level Genomes for All Living Bat Species

“…The unique biology of bats is important not only for understanding human health but also for maintaining and improving ecosystem health (7,58). Bats contribute disproportionately to ecosystem functions, for example, in the regeneration of tropical forests (59)(60)(61).…”

“…As people have brought in predators and commensal species, island bats have become increasingly imperiled, threatening to collapse local trophic chains and disrupt pollination and seed dispersal (61). Bats also feed on many pest insect species and act as a natural and effective pest control (6,(8)(9)(10)58). Insect-eating bats save maize farmers globally an estimated ∼US$1 billion a year from crop damage (58).…”

“…Bats also feed on many pest insect species and act as a natural and effective pest control (6,(8)(9)(10)58). Insect-eating bats save maize farmers globally an estimated ∼US$1 billion a year from crop damage (58). Bat genomes will help elucidate the genetic adaptations enabling bats to both detect flowering plants and act as pollinators and will provide the basic genomic resources and tools for future population-level analyses to investigate and understand the relationships between their dwindling populations and the ecosystems on which they rely and that rely on them.…”

When green and red mycology meet: Impressions from an interdisciplinary forum on virulence mechanisms of phyto- and human-pathogenic fungi

“…5 Besides this direct impact on global agriculture, indirect consequences affecting staple crops can emerge from ecological perturbations caused by fungi -a scenario seen for the epidemic of the white-nose syndrome among bats that is caused by a fungal pathogen, given the agroecological impact of these insectivorous animals. 6,7 Furthermore, the loss of carbon dioxide-absorbing trees due to fungal damage impacts the global climate and therefore plants and humans likewise.…”

Spatial variation of bat diversity between three floodplain-savanna ecosystems of the Colombian Llanos

“…These mammals make up assemblages of a high number of species that supply large amounts of biomass (Lim and Engstrom 2001). In addition, these bats display a great variety of feeding habits that include the use of plant and animal materials in various ways (Findley 1993;Kalko et al 1996;Schnitzler et al 2003;Patterson et al 2003;Saldaña-Vázquez 2014), thus playing key roles in the functioning of ecosystems as regulators of complex ecological processes (Muscarella and Flemming 2007;Kalka et al 2008;Kunz et al 2011;Maine and Boyles 2015). Most studies on the ecology of bats in the Neotropics have been conducted in rainforests covering lowlands in the Amazon watershed, Central America and Mexico (Sánchez-Palomino et al 1993;Voss and Emmons 1996;Montenegro and Romero-Ruiz 1999;Lim and Engstrom 2005;García-García and Santos-Moreno 2008;CalderonPatron et al 2013).…”