The roles of echolocation and olfaction in two Neotropical fruit-eating bats, Carollia perspicillata and C. castanea , feeding on Piper

Abstract

We studied the echolocation and foraging behavior of two Neotropical frugivorous leaf-nosed bats (Carollia perspicillata, C. castanea: Phyllostomidae) in ā ight cage. To test which cues Carollia uses to detect, identify, and localize ripe Piper fruit, their preferred natural food, we conducted experiments under seminatural conditions with ripe, unripe, and arti®cal fruits. We ®rst oered the bats ripe fruits and documented their foraging behavior using multi¯ash stereophotography combined with simultaneous sound recordings. Both species showed a similar, stereotyped foraging pattern. In search¯ight, the bats circled through the¯ight cage in search of a branch with ripe fruit. After ®nding such a branch, the bats switched to approach behavior, consisting of multiple exploration¯ights and the ®nal approach when the bats picked up the fruit at its tip and tore it o in¯ight. Our behavioral experiments revealed that odor plays an important role in enabling Carollia to ®nd ripe fruit. While foraging, Carollia always echolocated and produced multiharmonic, frequency-modulated (FM) signals of broad bandwidth, high frequency, short duration, and low intensity. We discriminated an orientation phase (mostly a single pulse per wingbeat) and an approach phase (groups of two to six pulses per wing beat). We conclude from the bats' behavioral reaction to real and arti®cial fruit as well as from characteristic patterns in their echolocation behavior that during exploration¯ights, Carollia changes from primarily odor-oriented detection and initial localization of ripe fruit to a primarily echo-oriented ®nal localization of the position of the fruit.

A Test of the Effects of Climate and Fruiting ofPiperSpecies (Piperaceae) on Reproductive Patterns of the BatCarollia perspicillata(Phyllostomidae)

“…If the beginning of fruiting influences the start of breeding in C. perspicillata, one could suppose that plants might produce some substance, probably not nutritive, which could act as a stimulus for the beginning of estrus. It has already been reported that Carollia bats use volatile substances produced by Piper plants as a clue to find mature fruits (Thies et al, 1998;Mikich et al, 2003). Besides, Dechaud et al (1999) and Breinholt et al (2000) suggested that flavinoids might be strong stimulants for mammalian reproduction, because they contain estrogen-like substances.…”

A Biodiversity Assessment of Bats (Chiroptera) in a Tropical Lowland Rainforest of Central Amazonia, Including Methodological and Conservation Considerations

“…To date, the nearest capture of C. castanea has been in Acre, Rio Branco, in the western Brazilian Amazon (Uieda, 1980). In Panamá, Carollia castanea and C. perspicillata overlap in habitat use and certain dietary resources (Thies et al, 1998). Both species eat Piper fruits but C. castanea is clearly a Piper specialist and may be thus strongly limited by the availability of these plants.…”

Roosting Ecology of Amazonian Bats: Evidence for Guild Structure in Hyperdiverse Mammalian Communities

“…Many zoologists assume-explicitly or implicitly-that trophic-resource partitioning is important for species coexistence, and this conviction has motivated a still-burgeoning literature on Neotropical bat diets and feeding behavior (e.g., Heithaus et al, 1975;Fleming et al, 1977;Bonaccorso, 1979;Bonaccorso and Gush, 1987;Thies et al, 1998;Dumont, 1999;Wendeln et al, 2000;Tschapka, 2004;Kalko, 2004, 2005;Rex et al, 2011;Andrade et al, 2013;Saldaña-Vázquez, 2014). Various trophicguild classifications have been defined on the basis of this research (LaVal and Fitch, 1977;Bonaccorso, 1979;Kalko et al, 1996), and trophic-guild membership is often used to assess Amazonian bat community structure (e.g., by Kalko and Handley, 2001;Lim and Engstrom, 2001;Bernard, 2002;Sampaio et al, 2003;Peters et al, 2006;Willig et al, 2007;Rex et al, 2008;Klingbeil and Willig, 2009;Bobrowiec and Gribel, 2010).…”