Seasonal weighted percentage of occurrence (wPOO) of different arthropod orders in the diet of bats of northern Madagascar

This table (updated from previous version) is part of the PhD thesis of Carme Tuneu-Corral, entitled 'Bats and rice: promoting Integrated Pest Management to enhance biodiversity conservation'. It is the Table A4.2 of the supplementary material of the Chapter 5 'Beyond borders: evaluating the role of protected areas in promoting bat-mediated pest suppression in rural areas of northern Madagascar', and illustrates the weighted percentage of occurrence (wPOO) of each arthropod order in the diet of the different bat species for each season (dry and wet). The values in brackets next to each species name are the total samples collected for that species.

Methodology: 

When focusing on the different bat species, bat diet was assessed using the weighted percentage of occurrence data (wPOO), which is similar to POO, but it weights each occurrence according to the number of food items in the sample, since it may be more biologically realistic than using POO or FOO. As discussed by Deagle et al. (2019), POO data is useful because it shows each food taxon's percentage of the total diet (unlike FOO, which does not sum to 100%). However, wPOO may be more accurate because it weights each sample equally, preventing samples with many food taxa from having stronger influence. wPOO values were also calculated for each season (dry/wet) independently, in order to perceive changes in prey preferences depending on the season.