A 50-million-year-old, three-dimensionally preserved bat skull supports an early origin for modern echolocation

Hand, Suzanne J.; Maugoust, Jacob; Beck, Robin M.D.; Orliac, Maeva J.

doi:10.1016/j.cub.2023.09.043

Cited by 13 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 146 publications

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“…Thus, the training dataset only includes extant species. If the training dataset is successful in discriminating between ecologies, pFDA can further be used to predict unknown ecologies based on the predictor (Motani & Schmitz 2011, Close & Rayfield 2012; Angielczyk & Schmitz 2014; Choiniere et al 2021; Fabbri et al, 2022; Hand et al 2023; Leavey et al 2023; Lowi-Merri et al 2023; see Foth et al 2019, Stayton 2019, and Hermanson et al 2022 for turtle examples), such as palaeoecology from fossil shell measurements. The analysis thus basically tests if simple shell ratio measurements can indeed be used to predict habitat ecology of turtle species.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Simple shell measurements do not consistently predict habitat in turtles: a reply to Lichtig and Lucas (2017)

Evers,

Foth,

Joyce

et al. 2024

Preprint

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Inferring palaeoecology for fossils is a key interest of palaeobiology. For groups with extant representatives, correlations of aspects of body shape with ecology can provide important insights to understanding extinct members of lineages. The origin and ancestral ecology of turtles is debated and various shell or limb proportions have been reported to correlate with habitat ecology among extant turtles, such that they may be informative for inferring the ecology of fossil turtles, including early shelled stem turtles. One recently described method proposes that simple shell measurements that effectively quantify shell doming and plastron width can differentiate habitat classes among extant turtles in linear discriminant analysis, whereby aquatic turtles have low domed shells with narrow plastra. The respective study proposes unorthodox habitat predictions for key fossil turtles, including aquatic lifestyles for the early turtle Proganochelys quenstedtii and the meiolaniform Meiolania platyceps, and terrestrial habits for the early turtle Proterochersis robusta. Here, we show that these published results are the consequence of questionable methodological choices such as omission of species data which do not conform to a preconceived shell shape-ecology association. When these choices are reversed, species measurements for fossils are corrected, and phylogenetic flexible discriminant analysis applied, habitat cannot be correctly predicted for extant turtles based on these simple shell measurements. This invalidates the method as well as the proposed palaeohabitats for fossils.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…2021;Fabbri et al, 2022;Hand et al 2023;Leavey et al 2023;Lowi-Merri et al 2023; see Foth et al 2019, Stayton 2019, and Hermanson et al 2022 for turtle examples), such as palaeoecology from fossil shell measurements. The analysis thus basically tests if simple shell ratio measurements can indeed be used to predict habitat ecology of turtle species.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Simple shell measurements do not consistently predict habitat in turtles: a reply to Lichtig and Lucas (2017)

Evers,

Foth,

Joyce

et al. 2024

Preprint

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“…Ancestral bats are thought to have been small, visual predators that first evolved the ability to echolocate around 50–65 million years ago allowing access to the untapped niche of nocturnal, flying insects [ 11 , 15 ]. The evolution of echolocation is still debated [ 16 , 17 ], but over evolutionary time, echolocation became the dominant sensory modality to navigate and forage in darkness. Given the high metabolic cost for growth and repair of mammalian retinal tissue [ 18 ], the functionality of vision in small insectivorous bats may then be expected to be reduced or even lost, if their vision is unused [ 19 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Daubenton’s bats maintain stereotypical echolocation behaviour and a lombard response during target interception in light

Uebel,

Pedersen,

Beedholm

et al. 2024

BMC Zool

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Most bats hunt insects on the wing at night using echolocation as their primary sensory modality, but nevertheless maintain complex eye anatomy and functional vision. This raises the question of how and when insectivorous bats use vision during their largely nocturnal lifestyle. Here, we test the hypothesis that the small insectivorous bat, Myotis daubentonii, relies less on echolocation, or dispenses with it entirely, as visual cues become available during challenging acoustic noise conditions. We trained five wild-caught bats to land on a spherical target in both silence and when exposed to broad-band noise to decrease echo detectability, while light conditions were manipulated in both spectrum and intensity. We show that during noise exposure, the bats were almost three times more likely to use multiple attempts to solve the task compared to in silent controls. Furthermore, the bats exhibited a Lombard response of 0.18 dB/dBnoise and decreased call intervals earlier in their flight during masking noise exposures compared to in silent controls. Importantly, however, these adjustments in movement and echolocation behaviour did not differ between light and dark control treatments showing that small insectivorous bats maintain the same echolocation behaviour when provided with visual cues under challenging conditions for echolocation. We therefore conclude that bat echolocation is a hard-wired sensory system with stereotyped compensation strategies to both target range and masking noise (i.e. Lombard response) irrespective of light conditions. In contrast, the adjustments of call intervals and movement strategies during noise exposure varied substantially between individuals indicating a degree of flexibility that likely requires higher order processing and perhaps vocal learning.

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“…Moreover, the fossil record shows early echolocating bats like Palaeochiropterygidae and Icaronycteridae [ 30 , 31 ]. A recently described 50-million-year-old bat fossil appears to have used advanced laryngeal echolocation, which suggests that this capacity would have originated before the modern bat radiation [ 32 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Correlated evolution between body size and echolocation in bats (order Chiroptera)

Castro,

Amado,

Olalla-Tárraga

2024

BMC Ecol Evo

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Background Body size and echolocation call frequencies are related in bats. However, it is unclear if this allometry applies to the entire clade. Differences have been suggested between nasal and oral emitting bats, as well as between some taxonomic families. Additionally, the scaling of other echolocation parameters, such as bandwidth and call duration, needs further testing. Moreover, it would be also interesting to test whether changes in body size have been coupled with changes in these echolocation parameters throughout bat evolution. Here, we test the scaling of peak frequency, bandwidth, and call duration with body mass using phylogenetically informed analyses for 314 bat species. We specifically tested whether all these scaling patterns differ between nasal and oral emitting bats. Then, we applied recently developed Bayesian statistical techniques based on large-scale simulations to test for the existence of correlated evolution between body mass and echolocation. Results Our results showed that echolocation peak frequencies, bandwidth, and duration follow significant allometric patterns in both nasal and oral emitting bats. Changes in these traits seem to have been coupled across the laryngeal echolocation bats diversification. Scaling and correlated evolution analyses revealed that body mass is more related to peak frequency and call duration than to bandwidth. We exposed two non-exclusive kinds of mechanisms to explain the link between size and each of the echolocation parameters. Conclusions The incorporation of Bayesian statistics based on large-scale simulations could be helpful for answering macroevolutionary patterns related to the coevolution of traits in bats and other taxonomic groups.

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A 50-million-year-old, three-dimensionally preserved bat skull supports an early origin for modern echolocation

Cited by 13 publications

References 146 publications

Simple shell measurements do not consistently predict habitat in turtles: a reply to Lichtig and Lucas (2017)

Simple shell measurements do not consistently predict habitat in turtles: a reply to Lichtig and Lucas (2017)

Daubenton’s bats maintain stereotypical echolocation behaviour and a lombard response during target interception in light

Correlated evolution between body size and echolocation in bats (order Chiroptera)

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