Winter diet analysis in Rhinolophus euryale (Chiroptera)

Abstract

We investigated the winter food of Mediterranean horseshoe bats (Rhinolophus euryale) in four winter cave roosts in southern Slovakia and northern Hungary and investigated the relationship between food and ambient temperature. The bats were active during the whole winter period and they produced excrement throughout the entire hibernation period, even when outside temperatures dropped below zero. The guano was in two forms, containing (1) prey items and (2) non-prey items. The identifiable items belonged to lepidopteran species, but only one was identified, on the basis of the genital fragments, the moth Colotois pennaria, which was the main prey species in autumn and early winter. Our results shed light on the extraordinarily high level of activity in this bat species during winter hibernation, which in temperate regions is a strategy that enables bats to survive when prey is reduced or absent. In R. euryale, the torpor in the course of hibernation is not continuous and our results help to explain how energy losses caused by bat movements are covered.

A Late Holocene environmental history of a bat guano deposit from Romania: an isotopic, pollen and microcharcoal study

“…Geochemical studies of cave guano, including studies using stable isotopes in particular, can provide paleoecological (relative abundance of C 3 -, C 4 -or CAM-type plants, vegetation changes, feeding behaviour of bats) and paleoclimate (precipitation) records (Des Marais et al, 1980;Mizutani et al, 1992a;McFarlane et al, 2002;Bird et al, 2007;Wurster et al, 2007;Onac et al, 2014Onac et al, , 2015. This work on cave paleoclimatic studies, builds on previous paleoenvironmental and paleoclimatic reconstructions using carbon isotopic composition of insect chitin in non-cave settings Miller, 1991;Gr€ ocke et al, 2006).…”

Second generation sequencing and morphological faecal analysis reveal unexpected foraging behaviour by Myotis nattereri (Chiroptera, Vespertilionidae) in winter

“…[19] and noctules ( Nyctalus noctula ) [20], and a single Natterer’s bat ( Myotis nattereri ) was radio tracked foraging outside of the hibernaculum over ten winter nights in the south of England [13]. Furthermore, studies on the winter diet of rhinolophid bats confirmed that these species feed throughout the winter in the United Kingdom [21,22] and continental Europe [23]. The majority of arousals [10,13] and peaks in subsequent activity [24,25] are synchronised around sunset, when insects will be most abundant [11,26].…”

Resource partitioning among bat species in Peninsular Malaysia rice fields

“…We found that male individuals were generalists, while females were specialists, as they ate specific orders of insects that fit their energy demand in different reproductive stages. Male individuals fed on any insects that were abundant during that season and were observed to fly more actively than female individuals ( Miková et al, 2013 ) due to energy demand. In this study, pregnant females were recorded to feed mostly on Coleoptera.…”