To Scream or to Listen? Prey Detection and Discrimination in Animal-Eating Bats

Jones, Patricia L.; Page, Rachel A.; Ratcliffe, John M.

doi:10.1007/978-1-4939-3527-7_4

Cited by 23 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 110 publications

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“…Some bats glean prey from foliage or from the ground, when echolocation is often not effective for prey detection because echoes from the cluttered substrate can mask prey echoes. Moving prey generates rustling sounds that are located by passive listening (e.g., Arlettaz et al 2001;Russo et al 2007a;Jones et al 2016). Passive gleaners produce weak calls that do not mask the faint prey-generated noise (Russo et al 2007a) or alert ultrasound-sensitive prey (e.g., Jones and Rydell 2003).…”

Section: Echolocation Behaviour and Call Structurementioning

confidence: 99%

Bats are still not birds in the digital era: echolocation call variation and why it matters for bat species identification

2018

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The recording and analysis of echolocation calls are fundamental methods used to study bat distribution, ecology, and behavior. However, the goal of identifying bats in flight from their echolocation calls is not always possible. Unlike bird songs, bat calls show large variation that often makes identification challenging. The problem has not been fully overcome by modern digital-based hardware and software for bat call recording and analysis. Besides providing fundamental insights into bat physiology, ecology, and behavior, a better understanding of call variation is therefore crucial to best recognize limits and perspectives of call classification. We provide a comprehensive overview of sources of interspecific and intraspecific echolocation call variations, illustrating its adaptive significance and highlighting gaps in knowledge. We remark that further research is needed to better comprehend call variation and control for it more effectively in sound analysis. Despite the state-of-art technology in this field, combining acoustic surveys with capture and roost search, as well as limiting identification to species with distinctive calls, still represent the safest way of conducting bat surveys.

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Section: Echolocation Behaviour and Call Structurementioning

confidence: 99%

Bats are still not birds in the digital era: echolocation call variation and why it matters for bat species identification

2018

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“…To overcome this challenge of echo overlap, bats often recruit a different sensory strategy—they listen for the sounds that their prey emit (Neuweiler, ). This hunting technique has been termed ‘passive listening’ and commonly takes the form of bats attending to the locomotion sounds of their prey (Jones, Page, & Ratcliffe, ).…”

Section: Private Information Usementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Given that attending to prey acoustic cues was likely the ancestral state in bats (Jones et al, ; Schnitzler et al, ), and that bats have largely retained an ability to hear low frequencies, it is surprising that there are not more bat species known to use passive acoustic hearing for hunting. Only about a third of bat families have species suspected or experimentally shown to use prey‐emitted cues or signals (Figure ).…”

Section: Sensory Adaptations For Obtaining Foraging Informationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The challenge of detecting prey: Private and social information use in predatory bats

Page

Bernal

2019

Functional Ecology

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In the evolutionary arms race between predators and their prey, prey often evolve to be as cryptic as they can, while predators in turn hone their sensory strategies to detect prey. Examinations of the sensory strategies implemented by predators to detect their prey, as well as the ecological consequences of these interactions, are at the crux of understanding and predicting predator–prey dynamics. We review the sensory strategies used by predators that rely on private information (attending directly to cues and signals generated by their prey) and those that gather social information (attending to the signals and behaviours of others). We focus our enquiry on bats, an ideal group to shed light on these questions given their ecological diversity, varied foraging strategies and wide range of social behaviours. We discuss the costs and benefits of using private and social information for foraging. We investigate diverse strategies of information use and examine the effects different predatory strategies have on predator sensory systems. We provide an overview of the sensory ecology of information use in hunting in bats and, by identifying current gaps in knowledge, highlight fruitful directions for future research. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

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“…Echolocation is poorly suited for detecting objects resting on vegetation or the ground because target and background echoes return nearly simultaneously. Bats that acquire stationary food items from surfaces (including insects, fruit and nectar) show increased reliance on passive listening (reviewed by Jones et al, 2016), olfaction (Korine and Kalko, 2005) and vision (Bell, 1985;Eklöf and Jones, 2003). Bats that forage close to vegetation tend to have larger eyes and better visual acuity than bats that forage in open spaces (table 2 in Eklöf, 2003).…”

Section: Scenario 3: Insect Noisementioning

confidence: 99%

Sensing in a noisy world: lessons from auditory specialists, echolocating bats

Corcoran

Moss

2017

Journal of Experimental Biology

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All animals face the essential task of extracting biologically meaningful sensory information from the 'noisy' backdrop of their environments. Here, we examine mechanisms used by echolocating bats to localize objects, track small prey and communicate in complex and noisy acoustic environments. Bats actively control and coordinate both the emission and reception of sound stimuli through integrated sensory and motor mechanisms that have evolved together over tens of millions of years. We discuss how bats behave in different ecological scenarios, including detecting and discriminating target echoes from background objects, minimizing acoustic interference from competing conspecifics and overcoming insect noise. Bats tackle these problems by deploying a remarkable array of auditory behaviors, sometimes in combination with the use of other senses. Behavioral strategies such as ceasing sonar call production and active jamming of the signals of competitors provide further insight into the capabilities and limitations of echolocation. We relate these findings to the broader topic of how animals extract relevant sensory information in noisy environments. While bats have highly refined abilities for operating under noisy conditions, they face the same challenges encountered by many other species. We propose that the specialized sensory mechanisms identified in bats are likely to occur in analogous systems across the animal kingdom.

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To Scream or to Listen? Prey Detection and Discrimination in Animal-Eating Bats

Cited by 23 publications

References 110 publications

Bats are still not birds in the digital era: echolocation call variation and why it matters for bat species identification

Bats are still not birds in the digital era: echolocation call variation and why it matters for bat species identification

The challenge of detecting prey: Private and social information use in predatory bats

Sensing in a noisy world: lessons from auditory specialists, echolocating bats

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