Citation: Korine, C.; Cohen, Y.; Kahnonitch, I. Insect Pest Pheromone Lures May Enhance the Activity of Insectivorous Bats in Mediterranean Vineyards and Apple Orchards. Sustainability 2022, 14, 16566. https://doi.org/10.3390/ su142416566 Academic Editors: Pietro Santamaria, Massimiliano Renna, Giulia Conversa and Antonio Elia Received: 7 October 2022 Accepted: 5 December 2022 Published: 10 December 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). sustainability Article Insect Pest Pheromone Lures May Enhance the Activity of Insectivorous Bats in Mediterranean Vineyards and Apple Orchards Carmi Korine 1, *, Yuval Cohen 1,2,† and Idan Kahnonitch 1,3,† 1 Mitrani Department of Desert Ecology, Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Midreshet Ben-Gurion 8499000, Israel 2 Northern R&D, Migal–Galilee Research Institute, Kiryat Shmona 11016, Israel 3 The Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Rehovot 5290002, Israel * Correspondence: ckorine@bgu.ac.il † These authors contributed equally to this work. Abstract: Insectivorous bats may play a significant role in regulating populations of agricultural pests. Currently, few methods are available to enhance the activity of bats in agroecosystems. We asked whether synthetic sex pheromones, used in integrated pest management (IPM) to impede the mating success of major moth pests in vineyards and apple orchards, could also enhance the activity and richness of insectivorous bats, their natural enemies. We hypothesized that applying concentrated sex pheromones of pest moths will alter the movement patterns of male moths, indirectly affecting bat richness and activity. We compared the effect of sex pheromones on bats under two different agricultural management systems: conventional farming and IPM. We used synthetic sex pheromones of Lobesia botrana or Cydia pomonella; both are among the most destructive moth pests in vineyards and apple orchards, respectively. Using passive acoustic monitoring, we compared species richness and bat activity in plots without and with additional pheromones. In both IPM vineyards and IPM apple orchards, total bat activity and species richness significantly increased after applying the pheromone treatment, with a positive correlation between total bat activity and the numbers of moth pests in the vineyards. In conventional vineyards, bat species richness increased significantly, but not total bat activity. IPM vineyards had significantly higher species richness than conventional vineyards, both before and after the pheromone treatment. Our study shows that moth pheromone lures, commonly used as a pest control method, may also attract insectivorous bats, which in turn may further suppress the pests. These findings highlight the potential of insectivorous bats as pest control agents and call for further research directed at integrating them in IPM practices. Keywords: insectivorous bats; integrated pest management; vineyards; apple orchards; pheromones; management schemes 1. Introduction Intensive agriculture has negative effects on biodiversity, soil health, water quality, and human health [1], which have led to the development of sustainable agricultural practices such as integrated pest management (IPM). IPM is recognized as a science- based management system to support pest control, implementing chemical and biological means, as well as agrotechnical approaches, to reduce the negative effects of pesticides on environmental health and economic costs [2]. A known pest control practice is the use of insect sex pheromones, which disrupt mating interactions and may contribute to a long-term reduction in insect populations [3]. Synthetic pheromones used in mating- disrupting pest control are typically species-specific, with no serious known adverse effects on non-target organisms [4,5]. Pheromones lures and traps are integrated into various crops Sustainability 2022, 14, 16566. https://doi.org/10.3390/su142416566 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability