Species richness of bat flies and their associations with host bats in a subtropical East Asian region.

Background: Understanding the interactions between bat flies and host bats offer us fundamental insights into the coevolutionary and ecological processes in host-parasite relationships. Here, we investigated the identities, host specificity, and patterns of host association of bat flies in a subtropical region in East Asia, which is an understudied region for bat fly research.

Methods: We used both morphological characteristics and DNA barcoding to identify the bat fly species found on 11 cavernicolous bat species from five bat families inhabiting Hong Kong.