Foraging choices of vampire bats in diverse landscapes: potential implications for land-use change and disease transmission.

In Latin America, the common vampire bat is the primary reservoir of rabies, a zoonotic virus that kills thousands of livestock annually and causes sporadic and lethal human rabies outbreaks. The proliferation of livestock provides an abundant food resource for this obligate blood-feeding species that could alter its foraging behaviour and rabies transmission, but poor understanding of the dietary plasticity of vampire bats limits understanding of how livestock influences rabies risk.We analysed individual- and population-level foraging behaviour by applying δC and δN stable isotope analysis to hair samples from 183 vampire bats captured from nine colonies in Peru.