Bechstein’s bats maintain individual social links despite a complete reorganisation of their colony structure

Baigger, Anja; Perony, Nicolas; Reuter, Miriam; Leinert, Vera; Melber, Markus; Grünberger, Susanne; Fleischmann, Daniela; Kerth, Gerald

doi:10.1007/s00114-013-1090-x

Cited by 26 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…In systems smaller than N crit , on the other hand, we could show that even induced group structures cannot be transformed into long-term community structures. This agrees with empirical observations that report the absence of such community structures in small colonies Baigger et al, 2013).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

“…The question is how this dynamics relates to other dynamical processes observed in the colony on longer time scales. Specically, Kerth et al (2011) and Baigger et al (2013) already reported that the long-term social network of larger colonies of Bechstein's bats consists of communities. These are quite stable social structures that can be detected over years.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Eventually, in this paper we also investigate how the formation of groups as part of the ssionfusion dynamics can be related to the emergence of long-term social structures, such as the Baigger et al, 2013). Both colonies were observed over many years, from 2004 to 2010 for GB2 and from 2004 to 2008 for BS.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Data-driven modeling of group formation in the fission-fusion dynamics of Bechstein’s bats

Perony

Kerth

Schweitzer

2019

Preprint

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Communal roosting in Bechstein's bat colonies is characterized by the formation of several groups that use dierent day roosts and that regularly dissolve and re-merge (ssion-fusion dynamics). Analyzing data from two colonies of dierent size over many years, we nd that (i) the number of days bats stay in the same roost before changing follows an exponential distribution that is independent of the colony size, and (ii) the number and size of groups bats formed for roosting depend on the size of the colony such that above a critical colony size two to six groups of dierent sizes are formed. To model these two observations, we propose an agent-based model in which agents make their decisions about roosts based on both random and social inuences. For the latter, they copy the roost preference of another agent which models the transfer of the respective information. Our model is able to reproduce both the distribution of stay length in the same roost and the emergence of groups of dierent sizes dependent on the colony size. Moreover, we are able to predict the critical system size at which the formation of dierent groups emerges without global coordination. We further comment on dynamics that bridge the roosting decisions on short time scale (less than one day) with the social structures observed at long time scales (more than one year).

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Data-driven modeling of group formation in the fission-fusion dynamics of Bechstein’s bats

Perony

Kerth

Schweitzer

2019

Preprint

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“…They refer to the same colony, BS, but to dierent years, 2007 and 2011. We observe that the size and the composition of the colony has changed drastically, due to external inuences and birth/death processes (Baigger et al, 2013;Fleischer et al, 2017). Table 1 gives an overview of the size of the L/F networks for the dierent years.…”

Section: Eventsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Data-driven modeling of leading-following behavior in Bechstein’s bats

Mavrodiev

Fleischmann

Kerth

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Leading-following behaviour in Bechstein's bats transfers information about suitable roost sites from experienced to inexperienced individuals, and thus ensures communal roosting. We analyze 9 empirical data sets about individualized leading-following (L/F) events, to infer rules that likely determine the formation of L/F pairs. To test these rules, we propose ve models that dier regarding the empirical information taken into account to form L/F pairs: activity of a bat in exploring possible roosts, tendency to lead and to follow. The comparison with empirical data was done by constructing social networks from the observed L/F events, on which centralities were calculated to quantify the importance of individuals in these L/F networks. The centralities from the empirical network are then compared for statistical dierences with the model-generated centralities obtained from 10 5 model realizations. We nd that two models perform well in comparison with the empirical data: One model assumes an individual tendency to lead, but chooses followers at random. The other model assumes an individual tendency to follow and chooses leaders according to their overall activity. We note that neither individual preferences for specic individuals, nor other inuences such as kinship or reciprocity, are taken into account to reproduce the empirical ndings. * Corresponding author, fschweitzer@ethz.ch 1/25 P. Mavrodiev, D. Fleischmann, G.Kerth, F. Schweitzer:Data-driven modeling of leading-following behavior in Bechstein's bats Submitted for publication coordination problems in animal systems (Kerth and Reckardt, 2003;Kerth et al., 2006). First, the frequent switching of communal day roosts implies that group coordination and collective decision-making regarding communal roosting is vital for individuals getting grouping benets.Second, coordination must be achieved in the presence of dierent individual preferences and limited information about the suitability of roosts , which has been recognized as particularly challenging for collective decision-making (Conradt, 2011)As Bechstein's bats forage solitarily , they have only limited information of the nightly exploration behaviour of others. Moreover, some individuals are more active in exploring their habitat and thus become better informed about the location of suitable roosts than their less active colony mates (Kerth and Reckardt, 2003;Fleischmann et al., 2013). Information asymmetry and heterogeneous roosting preferences in the colony are, thus, invariable challenges in coordinating roosting behaviour and ensuring grouping benets.All these challenges not only make it dicult for the colony members to achieve group coordination, they also make it hard for us to infer which inuence, on the individual level, is relevant for the outcome. The information transfer from informed to naive individuals does not explain how such individuals nd each other. Recruitment plays an important role (Richner and Heeb, 1996;Kerth and Reckardt, 2003), but the rules by which individuals form leading-follo...

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“…Baigger et al . () took advantage of a population crash (65% decline) in an intensively studied maternity colony of Bechstein's bat Myotis bechsteinii to evaluate stability of social subunits following a crash and found that the colony's two stable social subunits fused into a non‐modular social network. However, long‐term bonds identified prior to the crash were still detectable after the crash, suggesting that bats retain a memory for previous individual relationships following a reorganization of social structure (Baigger et al ., ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social implications of a colony collapse in a highly structured vertebrate species (long‐tailed bat, Chalinolobus tuberculatus)

Monks¹,

O’Donnell²

2016

Animal Conservation

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Strong social structuring within a population can confer fitness advantages to group members, but may also affect the ability of a population to recover from local extinctions. Opportunities to evaluate the dynamics of the collapse of a sub-population on a vertebrate population in the wild are rare, requiring a crash during a long-term study of marked individuals. Endangered long-tailed bats Chalinolobus tuberculatus, which are members of the widespread family Vespertilionidae, live in closed social groups as evidenced by non-random associations of individuals and a low degree of mixing among colonies. During a 19-year mark-recapture study of long-tailed bats in the Eglinton Valley, New Zealand, one colony of bats collapsed over a 2-year period in which numbers of introduced predators were high. We investigated individual-and colony-level implications of this local extinction event. Survivors (11 known) were assimilated into the neighbouring colony during and immediately after the collapse, but retained higher association rates with individuals from their former colony. The neighbouring colony gradually extended its roosting range into habitat formerly occupied by the extinct colony. Acceptance of individuals into other colonies demonstrates resilience of highly structured vertebrate populations to local crashes.

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Bechstein’s bats maintain individual social links despite a complete reorganisation of their colony structure

Cited by 26 publications

References 15 publications

Data-driven modeling of group formation in the fission-fusion dynamics of Bechstein’s bats

Data-driven modeling of group formation in the fission-fusion dynamics of Bechstein’s bats

Data-driven modeling of leading-following behavior in Bechstein’s bats

Social implications of a colony collapse in a highly structured vertebrate species (long‐tailed bat, Chalinolobus tuberculatus)

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