| the aerodynamic cost of head morphology in bats: maybe not as bad as it seems. | at first sight, echolocating bats face a difficult trade-off. as flying animals, they would benefit from a streamlined geometric shape to reduce aerodynamic drag and increase flight efficiency. however, as echolocating animals, their pinnae generate the acoustic cues necessary for navigation and foraging. moreover, species emitting sound through their nostrils often feature elaborate noseleaves that help in focussing the emitted echolocation pulses. both pinnae and noseleaves reduce the streamli ... | 2015 | 25739038 |
| perception of silent and motionless prey on vegetation by echolocation in the gleaning bat micronycteris microtis. | gleaning insectivorous bats that forage by using echolocation within dense forest vegetation face the sensorial challenge of acoustic masking effects. active perception of silent and motionless prey in acoustically cluttered environments by echolocation alone has thus been regarded impossible. the gleaning insectivorous bat micronycteris microtis however, forages in dense understory vegetation and preys on insects, including dragonflies, which rest silent and motionless on vegetation. from behav ... | 2013 | 23325775 |
| bat wing air pressures may deflect prey structures to provide echo cues for detecting prey in clutter. | bats have remarkable echolocation capabilities to detect prey in darkness. while it is clear how bats do this for prey that is isolated, moving, or noisy, their ability to find still and quiet prey within clutter has remained a mystery. a video published by the chiroping group shows the gleaning bat micronycteris microtis capturing a still dragonfly specimen sitting on a leaf surface. while hovering over the dragonfly, the bat's wings exert air forces that cause the dragonfly wings to deflect in ... | 2012 | 22978904 |
| all you can eat: high performance capacity and plasticity in the common big-eared bat, micronycteris microtis (chiroptera: phyllostomidae). | ecological specialization and resource partitioning are expected to be particularly high in the species-rich communities of tropical vertebrates, yet many species have broader ecological niches than expected. in neotropical ecosystems, neotropical leaf-nosed bats (phyllostomidae) are one of the most ecologically and functionally diverse vertebrate clades. resource partitioning in phyllostomids might be achieved through differences in the ability to find and process food. we selected micronycteri ... | 2011 | 22164308 |
| morphology-induced information transfer in bat sonar. | it has been argued that an important part of understanding bat echolocation comes down to understanding the morphology of the bat sound processing apparatus. in this letter we present a method based on information theory that allows us to assess target localization performance of bat sonar, without a priori knowledge on the position, size, or shape of the reflecting target. we demonstrate this method using simulated directivity patterns of the frequency-modulated bat micronycteris microtis. the ... | 2010 | 21230873 |
| what noseleaves do for fm bats depends on their degree of sensorial specialization. | many bats vocalizing through their nose carry a prominent noseleaf that is involved in shaping the emission beam of these animals. to our knowledge, the exact role of these appendages has not been thoroughly investigated as for no single species both the hearing and the emission spatial sensitivities have been obtained. in this paper, we set out to evaluate the complete spatial sensitivity of two species of new world leaf-nosed bats: micronycteris microtis and phyllostomus discolor. from an ecol ... | 2010 | 20808438 |
| noise as an informational cue for decision-making: the sound of rain delays bat emergence. | background noise can have strong negative consequences for animals, reducing individual fitness by masking communication signals, impeding prey detection and increasing predation risk. while the negative impacts of noise across taxa have been well documented, the use of noise as an informational cue, providing animals with reliable information on environmental conditions, has been less well studied. in the tropical rainforest, downpours can be intense and frequent. strong rainfall may impede eff ... | 2019 | 30665972 |
| predation risks of signalling and searching: bats prefer moving katydids. | males signalling their attractiveness to females are at risk from predators that exploit mating signals to detect and locate prey. signalling, however, is not the only risky activity in sexual interactions: mate searching can incur risk as well. male neotropical pseudophylline katydids produce both acoustic and vibrational signals (tremulations). females reply to male signals with tremulations of their own, and both sexes walk to find one another. we asked if movement increases predation risk, a ... | 2020 | 32315594 |
| bats actively use leaves as specular reflectors to detect acoustically camouflaged prey. | filtering relevant signals from noisy sensory input is a crucial challenge for animals [1, 2]. many bats are acoustic specialists relying on sound to find prey. they discern salient acoustic signals from irrelevant background masking noise. it has long been considered a sensory impossibility for bats to use solely echolocation for the detection of silent and motionless prey resting directly on foliage due to the masking effects of background echoes [3, 4]. some bats, however, do successfully per ... | 2019 | 31378617 |
| understory bat roosts, availability and occupation patterns in a neotropical rainforest of costa rica. | the strong link between bats and their roosts is widely recognized as being particularly significant. despite this, roosting ecology of bats is poorly understood and much of the basic information is still unknown. in this study, we investigated the availability and occupation patterns of four roost types (trees, caves, termite nests and tents) used by bats at tirimbina biological reserve (tbr), costa rica. to accomplish our aim, we systematically surveyed both sides of established trails and tra ... | 2016 | 29462548 |