Pollination implications of the diverse diet of tropical nectar-feeding bats roosting in an urban cave
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Biodiversity, Conservation Biology, Ecology, Ecosystem Science, Molecular Biology
- Keywords
- DNA metabarcoding, trophic interactions, plants, urbanisation, Peninsular Malaysia, Nectarivory, ITS2, rbcL, Eonycteris spelaea, bats
- Copyright
- © 2018 Lim et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2018. Pollination implications of the diverse diet of tropical nectar-feeding bats roosting in an urban cave. PeerJ Preprints 6:e26470v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.26470v1
Abstract
Background. Intense landscaping often alters the plant composition in urban areas. Knowing which plant species that pollinators are visiting in urban areas is necessary for understanding how landscaping impacts biodiversity and associated ecosystem services. The cave nectar bat, Eonycteris spelaea, is an important pollinator for many plants and is often recorded in human-dominated habitats. Previous studies of the diet of E. spelaea relied on morphological identification of pollen grains found in faeces and on the body of bats and by necessity disregarded other forms of digested plant material present in the faeces (i.e., plant juice and remnants). The main objective of this study was to examine the diet of the nectarivorous bat, E. spelaea, roosting in an urban cave at Batu Caves, Peninsular Malaysia by identifying the plant material present in the faeces of bats using DNA metabarcoding.
Methods. Faeces were collected under the roost of E. spelaea once a week from December 2015 to March 2016. Plant DNA was extracted from the faeces, PCR amplified at ITS2 and rbcL regions and mass sequenced. The resultant plant OTU were searched against NCBI GenBank for identification.
Results. A total of 55 species of plants were detected from faeces of E. spelaea including Artocarpus heterophyllus, Duabanga grandiflora and Musa spp. which are likely to be important food resources for the cave nectar bat.
Discussion. Many native plant species that had not been reported in previous dietary studies of E. spelaea were detected in this study including Bauhinia strychnoidea and Urophyllum leucophlaeum, suggesting that E. spelaea remains a crucial pollinator for these plants even in highly disturbed habitats. The detection of many introduced plant species in the bat faeces indicates that E. spelaea are exploiting them, particularly Xanthostemon chrysanthus, as food resources in urban area. Commercial food crops were detected from all of the faecal samples, suggesting that E. spelaea feed predominantly on the crops particularly jackfruit and banana and play a significant role in pollination of economically important plants. Ferns and figs were also detected in the faeces of E. spelaea suggesting future research avenues to determine whether the “specialised nectarivorous” E. spelaea feed opportunistically on other parts of plants.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.
Supplemental Information
Primers used in this study
Illumina adaptors are underlined whereas primer sequence are shown in regular font.
Further details on assigning taxonomic names to each OTU
Taxonomic assignation is based on BLAST results.
R script
R script used for estimating the species richness and sampling completeness ratio.
Complete checklist of plants consumed by Eonycteris spelaea
References: 1= Start & Marshall (1976) reported 31 plant species in diet of E. spealea roosting at Batu Caves and Gua Sanding in Peninsular Malaysia; 2= Hodgkison et al. (2004) reported four plant species in diet of E. spealea at primary forest in Peninsular Malaysia; 3= Bumrungsri et al. (2013) reported eleven plant species in diet of E. spelaea at Khao Kao Cave in Thailand; 4=Thavry et al. (2017) reported thirteen plant species in diet of E. spealea at Bat Khteas Cave in Cambodia; 5=This study detected 55 plant species using DNA metabarcoding.