TY  - INPR
A1  - Beetz, Marcel Jerome
A1  - Kössl, Manfred
A1  - Hechavarria-Cueria, Julio C.
T1  - Adaptations in the echolocation behavior of fruit-eating bats when orienting under challenging conditions
T2  - bioRxiv
N2  - Summary statement When echolocating under demanding conditions e.g. noisy, narrow space, or cluttered environments, frugivorous bats adapt their call pattern by increasing the call rate within biosonar groups.

Abstract For orientation, echolocating bats emit biosonar calls and use echoes arising from call reflections. They often pattern their calls into groups which increases the rate of sensory feedback over time. Insectivorous bats emit call groups at a higher rate when orienting in cluttered compared to uncluttered environments. Frugivorous bats increase the rate of call group emission when they echolocate in noisy environments. Here, calls emitted by conspecifics potentially interfere with the bat’s biosonar signals and complicate the echolocation behavior. To minimize the information loss followed by signal interference, bats may profit from a temporally increased sensory acquisition rate, as it is the case for the call groups. In frugivorous bats, it remains unclear if call group emission represents an exclusive adaptation to avoid interference by signals from other bats or if it represents an adaptation that allows to orient under demanding environmental conditions. Here, we compared the emission pattern of the frugivorous bat Carollia perspicillata when the bats were flying in noisy versus silent, narrow versus wide or cluttered versus non-cluttered corridors. According to our results, the bats emitted larger call groups and they increased the call rate within the call groups when navigating in narrow, cluttered, or noisy environments. Thus, call group emission represents an adaptive behavior when the bats orient in complex environments.
KW  - bats
KW  - orientation behavior
KW  - active sensing
KW  - sensory acquisition
Y1  - 2018
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/72512
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-725128
IS  - 485490
ER  -