Agricultural and silvicultural pest insects made up about 20% of insect species consumed by the studied bats. Common noctule bats consumed a wide variety of insects from different habitats, ranging from aquatic to terrestrial ecosystems (e.g., wetlands, farmland, forests, and grasslands). Specifically, we identified insect DNA in the stomachs of common noctule bats (Nyctalus noctula) killed by wind turbines in Germany to infer in which habitats these bats hunted.
Here, we studied the trophic interactions of bats killed at wind turbines using a DNA metabarcoding approach to shed light on how turbine‐related bat fatalities may possibly affect local habitats. We suggest that one reason why there are fewer bird than bat fatalities is that the unique respiratory anatomy of birds is less susceptible to barotrauma than that of mammals.Īgricultural practice has led to landscape simplification and biodiversity decline, yet recently, energy‐producing infrastructures, such as wind turbines, have been added to these simplified agroecosystems, turning them into multi‐functional energy‐agroecosystems. Air pressure change at turbine blades is an undetectable hazard and helps explain high bat fatality rates. We found that 90% of bat fatalities involved internal haemorrhaging consistent with barotrauma, and that direct contact with turbine blades only accounted for about half of the fatalities. We report here the first evidence that barotrauma is the cause of death in a high proportion of bats found at wind energy facilities. Barotrauma involves tissue damage to air-containing structures caused by rapid or excessive pressure change pulmonary barotrauma is lung damage due to expansion of air in the lungs that is not accommodated by exhalation. The decompression hypothesis proposes that bats are killed by barotrauma caused by rapid air-pressure reduction near moving turbine blades. Given that echolocating bats detect moving objects better than stationary ones, their relatively high fatality rate is perplexing, and numerous explanations have been proposed.
Bird fatalities at some wind energy facilities around the world have been documented for decades, but the issue of bat fatalities at such facilities - primarily involving migratory species during autumn migration - has been raised relatively recently.
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