# Research Progress in Bat Dietary Analysis: Methods, Applications, and Future Perspectives

## TL;DR

This paper reviews advances in studying what bats eat, highlighting how new DNA methods have improved understanding of their diets and ecological roles.

## Contribution

The paper provides a comprehensive synthesis of dietary analysis methods for bats, emphasizing recent molecular techniques and their ecological implications.

## Key findings

- DNA metabarcoding has revealed unexpected dietary variation in bats across time and space.
- Molecular methods are increasingly used to assess ecosystem services and trophic interactions.
- Future research priorities include long-read sequencing and integrating multiple dietary analysis methods.

## Abstract

Bats play a keystone role in ecosystems, providing quantifiable benefits through arthropod suppression, pollination, and seed dispersal. Reliable dietary inference is therefore essential for ecosystem-service assessment and evidence-based conservation. However, dietary characterization remains challenging because bats forage at night, feed cryptically, and digest rapidly. In this review, we synthesize progress in bat dietary analysis over the past several decades, spanning traditional microscopic identification of prey remains, stable isotope approaches that integrate assimilated resources over time, and DNA metabarcoding, which can detect prey and plant resources from fecal samples with much higher taxonomic resolution. We summarize advances across major feeding guilds (insectivorous, frugivorous, nectarivorous, carnivorous, and sanguivorous bats) and show how molecular diets have revealed unexpected temporal and spatial variation. These data are increasingly used to quantify ecosystem services, construct trophic interaction networks, and evaluate responses to habitat fragmentation, agricultural intensification, urbanization, and climate-driven shifts in resource phenology. We also outline priorities for the next phase of research, including long-read sequencing, multi-method integration, standardized protocols, and One Health applications linking dietary surveillance with disease ecology and risk management.

Bats (Chiroptera) provide critical ecosystem services, including pest suppression, pollination, and seed dispersal. Understanding their dietary ecology is essential for conservation management yet has historically been constrained by methodological limitations. This review synthesizes advances in bat dietary analysis over the past several decades, from traditional morphological and stable isotope approaches to the revolutionary DNA metabarcoding techniques that now dominate the field. We systematically evaluate the strengths and limitations of each methodological approach and examine how molecular methods have transformed our understanding of bat trophic ecology. Research progress across major feeding guilds—insectivorous, frugivorous, nectarivorous, carnivorous, and sanguivorous bats—is examined, with emphasis on recent discoveries enabled by molecular techniques. We discuss ecological and conservation applications, including ecosystem service quantification, food web construction, and responses to environmental change. Finally, we identify priority directions for future research, including long-read sequencing technologies, multi-method integration, reference database expansion, and One Health applications. This synthesis provides guidance for researchers selecting appropriate analytical approaches and highlights the critical role of dietary studies in bat conservation amid accelerating global change.