Forest Sciences Commons^™

Prey Size And Dietary Niche Of Rafinesque's Big-Eared Bat (Corynorhinus Rafinesquii), Luke E. Dodd, Michael J. Lacki, Joseph S. Johnson, Lynne K. Rieske

Forestry and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Bats in the genus Corynorhinus possess a suite of morphological characters that permit them to effectively use both gleaning and aerial-hawking foraging strategies to capture Lepidoptera. Consequently, they occupy a specialized feeding niche within North American bat assemblages and are of particular interest for dietary studies. We collected fecal pellets from a colony of C. rafinesquii (Rafinesque's Big-Eared Bat) at Mammoth Cave National Park during August–October 2011 and amplified cytochrome-c oxidase subunit 1 fragments of prey from these pellets. We used the Barcode of Life Database to identify prey, and evaluated the size of prey species based on published values. …