Publication
Title
DNA diet profiles with high‐resolution animal tracking data reveal levels of prey selection relative to habitat choice in a crepuscular insectivorous bird
Author
Abstract
Given the global decline of many invertebrate food resources, it is fundamental to understand the dietary requirements of insectivores. We give new insights into the functional relationship between the spatial habitat use, food availability, and diet of a crepuscular aerial insectivore, the European Nightjar (Caprimulgus europaeus) by relating spatial use data with high-throughput sequencing (HTS) combined with DNA metabarcoding. Our study supports the predictions that nightjars collect a substan- tial part of their daily nourishment from foraging locations, sometimes at consid- erable distance from nesting sites. Lepidopterans comprise 65% of nightjars' food source. Nightjars tend to select larger species of Lepidoptera (>19 mm) which sug- gests that nightjars optimize the efficiency of foraging trips by selecting the most energetically favorable—larger—prey items. We anticipate that our findings may shed additional light on the interactions between invertebrate communities and higher trophic levels, which is required to understand the repercussions of changing food resources on individual- and population-level processes.
Language
English
Source (journal)
Ecology and evolution. - Oxford, 2011, currens
Publication
Oxford : Wiley-Blackwell , 2020
ISSN
2045-7758
DOI
10.1002/ECE3.6893
Volume/pages
10 :23 (2020) , p. 13044-13056
ISI
000577511600001
Pubmed ID
33304515
Full text (Publisher's DOI)
Full text (open access)
UAntwerpen
Publication type
Subject
External links
Web of Science
Record
Identifier
Creation 29.10.2021
Last edited 29.08.2024
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