Diet analysis of kitti’s hog-nosed bat craseonycteris thonglongyai hill, 1974 using next generation sequencing technique

Kitti's hog-nosed bat Craseonycteris thonglongyai, Hill 1974 was a vulnerable species in IUCN Red List of Threatened Species in 2008. However, this species was reassessed to be near threatened species due to roosting caves discovery resulted in the increased total population size. Despite that, disturbance on its roosting and foraging sites from human activities are still occurred. Previous studies proposed that Kitti’s hog-nosed bats forage using familiar flight path within short distance from roosting cave. The foraging bouts were also short. Thus, there is a limitation on food availability in this bat species. Moreover, bats in different sexes and reproductive stages might require different amount of energy that might reflect different prey preference. Hence, this study aimed to identify prey species in Kitti's hog-nosed bat from fecal samples which provide high efficiency and less harm to bat. Molecular technique that could provide fast and effective results such as next generation sequencing technique was chosen. To compare dietary components between male and female bats and between female at various reproductive stages, DNA metabarcoding of Cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) gene was used. The results from 52 fecal samples revealed 1,154 arthropod MOTUs. After comparisons with the database, only 421 MOTUs could be classified into 2 classes (Arachnida and Insecta), 10 orders, 33 families, 47 genera and 62 species. Most of them were in order Diptera (50.12%), followed by Lepidoptera (16.63%) and Hemiptera (13.06%). In family level, the most abundance family was Chironomidae (8.08%), followed by Hydropsychidae (6.41%) and Culicidae (6.17%). No difference in prey diversity among males and females in different reproductive stages was found, but there was the difference in prey composition among them. In conclusion, dietary components of Kitti’s hog-nosed bat were diverse which most of them are Dipterans, and hence this species is a generalist. These suggested the important role of Kitti’s hog-nosed bat as natural insect controller as well as pest suppressor in the study area.