Fig 1.
Maps depicting the landscape around each maternity colony.
Nine land cover classes were displayed within a 10 km radius around the five bat colonies of Myotis emarginatus. Land cover classes were extracted and adapted (see the S1 File) from the 10 m resolution Landcover raster layer of 2015 created by the LifeWatch project and available at https://maps.elie.ucl.ac.be/lifewatch/ecotopes.html. Reprinted from the LifeWatch database under a CC BY license, with permission from LifeWatch Belgium, original copyright 2015.
Fig 2.
Relative proportion of the land cover classes around each maternity colony.
Nine land cover classes were compiled within a 10 km radius around the five bat colonies of Myotis emarginatus. Land cover classes were extracted and adapted (see the S1 File) from the 10 m resolution Landcover raster layer of 2015 created by the LifeWatch project and available at https://maps.elie.ucl.ac.be/lifewatch/ecotopes.html. Percentage values above 5% were displayed on the plot. Abbreviated land cover classes: Artificial (Artificially sealed grounds & buildings); Broadleaved (Broadleaved trees); Coniferous (Coniferous trees); GrassBiol (Grasslands and scrubs of biological interest); GrassInt (Grassland with intensive management); Nat<10%Veg (Natural Material Surfaces <10% vegetation); VegDisturbed (Vegetation of recently disturbed areas). On the x-axis, the number of individual fecal pellets is between brackets.
Fig 3.
Number of Arthropoda prey taxa recovered in the diet of Myotis emarginatus with the PCR primers from Galan et al. [58] and Zeale et al. [68] for the 17 taxa orders. Values above 5 were displayed on the plot.
Fig 4.
Accumulation curves of taxa species diversity.
Alpha diversity was based on Hill numbers calculated for q = 0, corresponding to prey richness. Curves are drawn for each sampling session and according to the number of guano bat samples analyzed for their diet. Shape symbols represent the observed values and dashed lines the extrapolated values expected with increased sampling effort. Shaded areas represent 95% confidence intervals. The observed percentage of sampled richness (observed value/estimated value*100) was: 60.95% (June), 60.08% (July) and 62.79% (August). In the legend, n = number of individual fecal pellets.
Fig 5.
Probability estimates (with 95% confidence intervals) of the taxa richness eaten by Myotis emarginatus per sampling session (June, July and August) and for the most consumed orders, as inferred by generalized linear mixed models with a quasi-Poisson distribution (glmmPQL function; equation: Order ~ session + (1 | locality)).
Table 1.
GLMM outputs of the sessions pairwise comparisons.
Table 2.
PERMANOVA outputs of the sessions pairwise comparisons.
Fig 6.
Non-Metric Multidimensional Scaling, based on a Horn-Morisita dissimilarity matrix constructed on the weighted percentage of occurrence data of the diet (wPO: Within each sample, it is the prey item occurrence/total number of occurrences of all prey*100). Colors indicate the sampling session: June, July and August. Shape symbols represent the sampling location of the Myotis emarginatus’ droppings in Wallonia, Belgium: Aubel, Aulne, Durbuy, Freyr and Rochefort. In the legend, n = number of individual fecal pellets.
Fig 7.
Weighted percentage of occurrence (wPO: Within each sample, it is the prey item occurrence/total number of occurrences of all prey*100) of the Lepidoptera taxa according to their life stage in the diet of each sampled colony of Myotis emarginatus. wPO values above 5% were displayed on the plot. Life stage: Both possible (distinction between imago and caterpillar is not possible as the two stages temporally overlap at the time of sampling), Both sure (taxa retrieved both during the caterpillar stage and imago stage for sure), Caterpillar, Imago, Not assigned (because taxa not detected at the species level), Unknown (currently not enough data on the life stage). On the x-axis, n = number of taxa occurrences.
Fig 8.
Correlation between pest flies and cows’ numbers.
Pearson correlation between the mean weighted percentage of occurrence (wPO: Within each sample, it is the prey item occurrence/total number of occurrences of all prey*100) values of pest flies attested to feed on cattle (Stomoxys calcitrans, Musca domestica, Culex sp.) eaten by Myotis emarginatus in each colony and the relative cow (either meat cattle or dairy cattle) numbers within a 10 km radius around each sampled colony. The number of individual fecal pellets considered by colony is shown between brackets. The shaded area represents the 95% confidence interval. The correlation is positive but weak (r2 = 0.221) and not significant (p = 0.721).