Summary. 1. Young Hipposideros speoris emit multiharmonic sounds in groups of three to four notes. Newborns emit a relatively uniform pattern of FM-and FM/CF/FM-sounds. From ten days of age onwards the initial sound (first note) of a group is a FM-sound whereas the successive ones are CF/FM-sounds of consistently higher frequencies. At prevolant and volant stages of the bat's development most of the sound energy is concentrated in the second harmonic which is raised to the frequency range of the adults' CF/FM-sounds (127-138 kHz). Subsequently other harmonics disappear.2. Harmonic components are suppressed or filtered out when they fall in a frequency range of approximately 65-75 kHz. This was found for bats of different ages regardless which fundamental frequency the suppressed harmonic components corresponded to, indicating a mechanical filtering process. These measurements coincide with the absence of the first harmonics in the same frequency range in the sounds of adults.3. Temporal sound emission patterns were measured for bats of different ages. There was an increase in sound duration and an increase in the number of sounds (notes) per group as the bat matured to adulthood.4. The sound emission of juveniles aids mothers in finding their young ones. Mothers located their infants even when the juveniles were displaced far from where they were left behind by their mothers. Behavioral experiments under both natural and captive conditions showed that the sound emission of young ones attracts mothers but do not give sufficient cues to allow the mother to discriminate their own from a group of young.
We studied the in¯uence of moonlight upon the foraging activity pattern of the fruit bat Cynopterus sphinx. We observed the bats when foraging on the fruits of Calophyllum inophyllum and on the leaves of Mimusops elengi and Cassia ®stula for 31, 27 and 28 days, respectively at the botanical garden in the Madurai Kamaraj University campus. The number of feeding bouts was recorded every hour between 18:00 and 05:00. A feeding bout involves a bat landing on the tree and collecting a part (or whole) of the fruit or a leaf. The total number of feeding bouts was negatively correlated with per cent moonlight each night. The number of feeding bouts decreased during the waxing phases of the moon. During the period of new moon the mean number of feeding bouts was signi®cantly higher compared to the periods of other phases. During the ®rst quarter and the last quarter phases, feeding occurred more during the dark part of the night, especially when the bats foraged upon M. elengi and C. ®stula. While cloud cover enhanced the foraging activity, lightning and thunder suppressed it. Our study indicates that moonlight in¯uences the foraging activity of C. sphinx.
The locomotor activity of the millipede Glyphiulus cavernicolus (Spirostreptida), which occupies the deeper recesses of a cave, was monitored in light-dark (LD) cycles (12h light and 12h darkness), constant darkness (DD), and constant light (LL) conditions. These millipedes live inside the cave and are apparently never exposed to any periodic factors of the environment such as light-dark, temperature, and humidity cycles. The activity of a considerable fraction of these millipedes was found to show circadian rhythm, which entrained to a 12:12 LD cycle with maximum activity during the dark phase of the LD cycle. Under constant darkness (DD), 56.5% of the millipedes (n = 23) showed circadian rhythms, with average free-running period of 25.7h +/- 3.3h (mean +/- SD, range 22.3h to 35.0h). The remaining 43.5% of the millipedes, however, did not show any clear-cut rhythm. Under DD conditions following an exposure to LD cycles, 66.7% (n = 9) showed faint circadian rhythm, with average free-running period of 24.0h +/- 0.8h (mean +/- SD, range 22.9h to 25.2h). Under constant light (LL) conditions, only 2 millipedes of 11 showed free-running rhythms, with average period length of 33.3h +/- 1.3h. The results suggest that these cave-dwelling millipedes still possess the capacity to measure time and respond to light and dark situations.
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