• Assessed climate change impacts on bats’ pest suppression. • Modelled temperature and precipitation impact on seven bat predators of pine moth. • High-emission scenarios project severe loss of pest suppression by 2100. • Under climatic stress, refugial areas are located around mountain summits. • Urgent need to integrate climate change into pest and biodiversity policies. Climate change poses significant threats to biodiversity and ecosystem services, including bat-mediated pest suppression. This study aims to assess how temperature and precipitation changes may affect bat populations and their role in suppressing pine processionary moth ( Thaumetopoea pityocampa ) in Serra da Estrela, Portugal. We identified the Top-7 bat species with >10% pine processionary moth occurrences in their diet, using faecal DNA metabarcoding. Climate model projections (SSP245 and SSP585) were then used to assess impacts on these species and their pest suppression services. We analysed temperature and precipitation anomalies for 2041–2060, 2061–2080 and 2081–2100 to identify areas and species most exposed to climate stress. Our results show that under SSP585, rising temperatures could lead to a complete loss of sites providing bat-mediated pest suppression and associated species richness by 2081–2100, while the worst-case precipitation scenario (SSP585) projects a coverage reduction of up to 87 % by 2061–2080, with a potential total loss of suitable habitat by 2081–2100, highlighting severe local declines in service provision. Riparian and diverse-vegetation zones with high climate anomalies are critical for sustaining bat populations and their pest-suppression capacity. These findings emphasise the urgency of incorporating climate change into conservation planning and adaptive pest-management policies, providing evidence-based guidance for biodiversity conservation as well as forest and agricultural management strategies.
M et al. (Sun,) studied this question.