Bats are sentinels for invasive pest surveillance based on DNA metabarcoding

Insectivorous bats have been identified as important agents for biological pest control in the agroecosystems and impose strong top-down pressure on pests (Ramirez-Francel et al., 2022). Without bats, it is estimated that the United States would spend more than $3 billion a year on pesticides alone (Boyles et al., 2011). Thus, bats are expected to be natural pest collectors (Kunz, 2011). However, it is still unproven assumption that bats can be used to efficiently monitor invasive pests in agroecosystems. Due to the wide distribution of bats, their high foraging efficiency, large activity range, and because most bats return to the same habitat and cluster in roosts together after foraging, collecting fecal samples is feasible and convenient. In our preliminary experiments, multiple bat species were found to normally consume FAW, which provides an excellent opportunity for verifying the practicability of DNA metabarcoding in monitoring the invasion of this pest.