Market Forces Influence the Value of Bat-Provided Services

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Newswise KNOXVILLEServices provided by Mother Nature, such as pest control from insect-eating bats, are affected by market forces like most anything else in the economy, a University of Tennessee, Knoxville, study finds.

The study's results have implications for biodiversity conservation efforts.

Researchers from UT and the University of Arizona, Tucson, studied how forces such as volatile market conditions and technological substitutes affect the value of pest control services provided by Mexican free-tailed bats on cotton production in the U.S. They found the services are impacted by the forces to the tune of millions of dollars.

The study, conducted by Gary McCracken, professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and led by UA's Laura Lpez-Hoffman, is the first to examine how bat ecosystem services change over time. It is published in this week's edition of the journal PLOS ONE. To view the article, visit http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0087912.

There are more than 1,200 bat species and two-thirds of them are insectivorous, which means they help farmers by preying on pests and reducing the need for insecticides. The researchers calculated the value of the bat pest control service each year from 1990 through 2008 by estimating the value of avoided crop damage and the reduced social and private costs of insecticide use in the presence of bats.

Taking into account a drop in cotton commodity price, the resulting decrease in cotton production and the adoption of transgenic Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) cotton, which is modified to express its own pesticide, the researchers found that the value of the pest control services dropped 79 percent, from a high of $23.96 million in 1990 to a low of $4.88 million in 2008.

"The results of this study document that volatile market conditions and technological substitutes such as Bt cotton can affect the value of an ecosystem service even when ecosystem function, in this case bat population numbers, may remain constant," said McCracken.

The findings fuel a discussion as to whether or not it is economically worthwhile to conserve biodiversity.

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Market Forces Influence the Value of Bat-Provided Services