sensory ecology of water detection by bats a field experiment感觉生态水的检测蝙蝠现场试验.pdfVIP

Sensory Ecology of Water Detection by Bats: A Field Experiment 1,2 3 2 Danilo Russo *, Luca Cistrone , Gareth Jones ` ` 1 Laboratorio di Ecologia Applicata, Dipartimento Ar.Bo.Pa.Ve., Facolta di Agraria, Universita degli Studi di Napoli Federico II Portici, Napoli, Italy, 2 School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom, 3 Forestry and Conservation, Cassino, Italy Abstract Bats face a great risk of dehydration, so sensory mechanisms for water recognition are crucial for their survival. In the laboratory, bats recognized any smooth horizontal surface as water because these provide analogous reflections of echolocation calls. We tested whether bats also approach smooth horizontal surfaces other than water to drink in nature by partly covering watering troughs used by hundreds of bats with a Perspex layer mimicking water. We aimed 1) to confirm that under natural conditions too bats mistake any horizontal smooth surface for water by testing this on large numbers of individuals from a range of species and 2) to assess the occurrence of learning effects. Eleven bat species mistook Perspex for water relying chiefly on echoacoustic information. Using black instead of transparent Perspex did not deter bats from attempting to drink. In Barbastella barbastellus no echolocation differences occurred between bats approaching the water and the Perspex surfaces respectively, confirming that bats perceive water and Perspex to be acoustically similar. The drinking attempt rates at the fake surface were often lower than those recorded in the laboratory: bats then either left the site or moved to the control water surface. This suggests