Predator to Prey to Poop: Bats as Microbial Hosts and Insectivorous Hunters
2020-09
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Predator to Prey to Poop: Bats as Microbial Hosts and Insectivorous Hunters
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2020-09
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Bat fecal samples are a rich source of ecological data for bat biologists, entomologists, and microbiologists. Feces collected from individual bats can be used to profile the gut microbiome using microbial DNA and to understand bat foraging strategies using arthropod DNA. We used eDNA collected from bat fecal samples to better understand bats as predators in the context of their unique gut physiology. We used high through- put sequencing of the COI gene and 16S rRNA gene to determine the diet composition and gut microbiome composition of three bat species in Minnesota: Eptesicus fuscus, Myotis lucifugus and M. septentrionalis. In our analysis of insect prey, we found that E. fuscus consistently foraged for a higher diversity of beetle species compared to other insects. We found that the proportional frequency of tympanate samples from M. septentrionalis and M. lucifugus was similar, while M. septentrionalis consistently preyed more often upon non-flying species. We used the same set of COI sequences to determine presence of pest species, rare species, and insects not previously observed in Minnesota. We were able to combine precise arthropod identification and the for- aging areas of individually sampled bats to observe possible range expansion of some insects. The taxonomic composition of the bat gut microbiome in all three species was found to be consistent with the composition of a mammalian small intestine. The gut community was dominated by microbes that subsist on mucins and simple sugars, mostly in the phyla Proteobacteria and Firmicutes. Lactic acid bacteria were proportionally more abundant than most other groups of bacteria across all host de- mographic variables measured. As high throughput sequencing costs continue to drop and bioinformatic techniques mature, studies such as this will become more valuable for evaluating ecological hypotheses in a holobiontic context. R code used in this thesis are provided in a supplementary PDF.
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University of Minnesota M.S. thesis. 2020. Major: Integrated Biosciences. Advisors: Ron Moen, Jessica Sieber. 1 computer file (PDF); 131 pages.
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Galey, Miranda. (2020). Predator to Prey to Poop: Bats as Microbial Hosts and Insectivorous Hunters. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/217130.
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