Visually guided escape responses of microchiropteran bats

Chase, Julia

doi:10.1016/s0003-3472(81)80005-x

Cited by 41 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 17 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Since the detection range of even large objects using echolocation is short (no more than 100 m, Holderied and Von Helversen, 2003; Stilz and Schnitzler, 2012) we hypothesize that in intermediate light levels characteristic of dusk, many bats use bimodal sensing. On the one hand, bats predominantly rely on vision for orientation, navigation and avoiding large background obstacles (e.g., Williams and Williams, 1967; Chase, 1981; Mistry, 1990), while on the other hand they mainly rely on echolocation when searching for small prey (Figure 4). Clearly, these two are not mutually exclusive behaviors.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

It's not black or white—on the range of vision and echolocation in echolocating bats

Boonman¹,

Bar-On²,

Cvikel³

et al. 2013

Front. Physiol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Around 1000 species of bats in the world use echolocation to navigate, orient, and detect insect prey. Many of these bats emerge from their roost at dusk and start foraging when there is still light available. It is however unclear in what way and to which extent navigation, or even prey detection in these bats is aided by vision. Here we compare the echolocation and visual detection ranges of two such species of bats which rely on different foraging strategies (Rhinopoma microphyllum and Pipistrellus kuhlii). We find that echolocation is better than vision for detecting small insects even in intermediate light levels (1–10 lux), while vision is advantageous for monitoring far-away landscape elements in both species. We thus hypothesize that, bats constantly integrate information acquired by the two sensory modalities. We suggest that during evolution, echolocation was refined to detect increasingly small targets in conjunction with using vision. To do so, the ability to hear ultrasonic sound is a prerequisite which was readily available in small mammals, but absent in many other animal groups. The ability to exploit ultrasound to detect very small targets, such as insects, has opened up a large nocturnal niche to bats and may have spurred diversification in both echolocation and foraging tactics.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

It's not black or white—on the range of vision and echolocation in echolocating bats

Boonman¹,

Bar-On²,

Cvikel³

et al. 2013

Front. Physiol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…There is evidence that foraging phyllostomids also use other sensory cues to ®nd food. These include acoustic cues such as the mating calls of frogs and katydids (e.g., Behav Ecol Sociobiol (1998) 42: 397±409 Belwood 1988;Tuttle et al 1985), olfactory cues of fruits and¯owers (e.g., Dobat and Peikert-Holle 1985;Laska 1990b;van der Pijl 1957van der Pijl , 1982 or, under favorable circumstances, even visual cues (Bell 1985;Bell and Fenton 1986;Chase 1981;Chase and Suthers 1969;Hessel and Schmidt 1994;Joermann et al 1988). Because most of the behavioral studies to date have been conducted under laboratory conditions with trained bats and arti®cial targets, and only few studies have been performed under natural or semi-natural conditions (e.g., Barclay et al 1981;Bell 1985;Tuttle and Ryan 1981), for many phyllostomids, the signi®cance of echolocation and other sensory cues in the context of foraging behavior is still unknown (Fenton 1995).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Thies

Kalko

Schnitzler

1998

Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology

207

224

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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.

show abstract

“…Under controlled laboratory conditions, Anoura geoffroyi can use visual cues to escape but uses echolocation in the absence of visual cues (Chase 1981(Chase , 1983. While navigating through a laboratory obstacle course, A. geoffroyi emitted pulses of 0.5-2 ms duration at pulse rates up to 30/s, depending on proximity to vertically strung wires and to the diameter of the wires (Howell 1974).…”

Section: Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%