Social calls honestly signal female competitive ability in Asian particoloured bats

Luo, Bo; Lu, Guanjun; Chen, Kelly; Guo, Dongge; Huang, Xiaobin; Liu, Ying; Feng, Jiang

doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2017.03.012

Cited by 27 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…Additionally, we also found that body size was significantly positively correlated with dominance rank in Asian particolored bats [60]. Larger individuals occupied a more central position in the day roost, and thus effectively reduced heat loss [106,107]. In contrast, smaller bats with weaker competitive ability occupied a marginal area of the roost.…”

Section: Effects Of Body Size On Personalitiesmentioning

confidence: 57%

Morphological Correlates of Personality in Female Asian Particolored Bats (Vespertilio sinensis)

Wang

Shi

Zhao

et al. 2020

Animals

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Personality traits represent a leading edge in the evolutionary process, as natural selection acts directly on variations in individual phenotypes within populations. Recent theoretical models have focused on the concept of adaptive state-dependent behavior, proposing that repeatable differences in behavior emerge because of individual differences in repeatable state variables, such as metabolic rate, age, sex, or body size. Personality and its correlation with body size, however, have been relatively unexplored in bats. We used female Asian particolored bats (Vespertilio sinensis) to investigate three personality characteristics (exploration, activity, and aggression) using the classic hole-board test and examined their relationships with body size using an information-theoretical approach. Our results showed that the exploration of female Asian particolored bats was significantly repeatable, but we did not find significant correlations among the three personality traits. This finding suggested that the female Asian particolored bat may not have a behavioral syndrome. In addition, the body mass of female Asian particolored bats was positively correlated with aggression but was negatively correlated with activity, suggesting that body mass was an important physiological basis affecting the behavioral characteristics of female Asian particolored bats.

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Section: Effects Of Body Size On Personalitiesmentioning

confidence: 57%

Morphological Correlates of Personality in Female Asian Particolored Bats (Vespertilio sinensis)

Wang

Shi

Zhao

et al. 2020

Animals

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“…Bats that rely on ephemeral food resources, such as fruiting trees and insect swarms, or that more generally exploit sites where food availability tends to decline quickly, may defend their feeding territories or repel other individuals. For these tasks, bats use visual displays and, more often, species‐specific calls, commonly comprising multiple harmonics and components (Pfalzer & Kusch, ), whose structural complexity and variation might represent a way to encode different information or motivation (Russo et al, ; Luo et al, ). Using playback experiments, Barlow & Jones () showed that Pipistrellus pipistrellus and P. pygmaeus social calls serve an agonistic function and are species specific as they repel only conspecifics from foraging sites.…”

Section: Why Do Bats Communicate?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Social communication in bats

2018

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Bats represent one of the most diverse mammalian orders, not only in terms of species numbers, but also in their ecology and life histories. Many species are known to use ephemeral and/or unpredictable resources that require substantial investment to find and defend, and also engage in social interactions, thus requiring significant levels of social coordination. To accomplish these tasks, bats must be able to communicate; there is now substantial evidence that demonstrates the complexity of bat communication and the varied ways in which bats solve some of the problems associated with their unique life histories. However, while the study of communication in bats is rapidly growing, it still lags behind other taxa. Here we provide a comprehensive overview of communication in bats, from the reasons why they communicate to the diversity and application of different signal modalities. The most widespread form of communication is the transmission of a signaller's characteristics, such as species identity, sex, individual identity, group membership, social status and body condition, and because many species of bats can rely little on vision due to their nocturnal lifestyles, it is assumed that sound and olfaction are particularly important signalling modes. For example, research suggests that secretions from specialized glands, often in combination with urine and saliva, are responsible for species recognition in several species. These olfactory signals may also convey information about sex and colony membership. Olfaction may be used in combination with sound, particularly in species that emit constant frequency (CF) echolocation calls, to recognize conspecifics from heterospecifics, yet their simple structure and high frequency do not allow much information of individual identity to be conveyed over long distances. By contrast, social calls may encode a larger number of cues of individual identity, and their lower frequencies increase their range of detection. Social calls are also known to deter predators, repel competitors from foraging patches, attract group mates to roost sites, coordinate foraging activities, and are used during courtship. In addition to sound, visual displays such as wing flapping or hovering may be used during courtship, and swarming around roost sites may serve as a visual cue of roost location. However, visual communication in bats still remains a poorly studied signal modality. Finally, the most common form of tactile communication known in bats is social grooming, which may be used to signal reproductive condition, but also to facilitate and strengthen cooperative interactions. Overall, this review demonstrates the rapid advances made in the study of bat social communication during recent years, and also identifies topics that require further study, particularly those that may allow us to understand adaptation to rapidly changing environmental conditions.

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“…The food defense hypothesis emphasizes that echolocating bats produce social calls to claim the ownership of food resources (Rydell 1986). In this case, senders should emit low-frequency, broadband and repetitive vocalizations to warn potential competitors away from food patches, as evidenced by Pipistrellus pipistrellus (Barlow & Jones 1997), E. fuscus (Wright et al 2014) and Vespertilio sinensis (Luo et al 2017b). In this study, we found that M. macrodactylus uttered most of their social vocalizations with acoustic features that were long in duration and low in frequency.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 61%

Social vocalizations of big‐footed myotis (Myotis macrodactylus) during foraging

Guo

Luo

Zhang

et al. 2019

Integrative Zoology

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Acoustic signals play a crucial role in transmitting information and maintaining social stability in gregarious animals, especially in echolocating bats, which rely primarily on biological sonar for navigating in the dark. In the context of foraging without relying on tactile, visual or olfactory cues, acoustic signals convey information not only on food but also on ownership and defense of resources. However, studies on such information remain fragmentary. In the present study, we aim to document the social vocal repertoire of Myotis macrodactylus at natural foraging sites. Multiple acoustic analyses and spectrographic classification revealed a rich foraging vocal repertoire comprising 6 simple syllables and 2 composites. Discriminant function analyses associated with a subset‐validation procedure provided an optimal method to spectrographically classify all recorded sounds into different syllable types. Multidimensional scaling of median values of multiple parameters further confirmed notable differences among these syllables in a 3‐D space. In addition, Euclidean distance analysis showed that there were some spectral similarities between specific social vocal syllables and feeding buzzes, which implied a potential jamming role. Altogether, the data indicate that bats at foraging sites under natural conditions used variant social vocalizations with different functions in addition to echolocation calls, providing supporting evidence for further work on the function and vocal mechanisms of acoustic communication in mammals.

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Social calls honestly signal female competitive ability in Asian particoloured bats

Cited by 27 publications

References 39 publications

Morphological Correlates of Personality in Female Asian Particolored Bats (Vespertilio sinensis)

Morphological Correlates of Personality in Female Asian Particolored Bats (Vespertilio sinensis)

Social communication in bats

Social vocalizations of big‐footed myotis (Myotis macrodactylus) during foraging

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