Abstract
Bats rely on their hand-wings to execute agile flight maneuvers, to grasp objects, and cradle young. Embedded in the dorsal and ventral membranes of bat wings are microscopic hairs. Past research findings implicate dorsal wing hairs in airflow sensing for flight control, but the function of ventral wing hairs has not been previously investigated. Here, we test the hypothesis that ventral wing hairs carry mechanosensory signals for flight control, prey capture, and handling. To test this hypothesis, we used synchronized high-speed stereo video and audio recordings to quantify flight and echolocation behaviors of big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus) engaged in an aerial insect capture task. We analyzed prey-capture strategy and performance, along with flight kinematics, before and after depilation of microscopic hairs from the bat’s ventral wing and tail membranes. We found that ventral wing hair depilation significantly impaired the bat’s prey-capture performance. Interestingly, ventral wing hair depilation also produced increases in the bat’s flight speed, an effect previously attributed exclusively to airflow sensing along the dorsal wing surface. These findings demonstrate that microscopic hairs embedded in the ventral wing and tail membranes of insectivorous bats provide mechanosensory feedback for prey handling and flight control.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Clarice Diebold for assistance with wing hair depilation, Drs. Kristen Bohn and Jeffrey Bowen for guidance and advice on statistics, and Dr. Dimitri Skandalis for advice on preliminary data analyses. We would also like to thank our team of research assistants: Sarah Huh, Brooke Stanicki, Dean Sheehan, Cory Silver, David Gauthier, Leigh Kinsler, Katherine Armenta, Jessie Gallegos, Kristen Chao, Isaac Lee, Mya Thomas, Adriana Pereira, and Jennifer Cossentino, who were essential during data collection and processing.
Funding
This research was supported by National Science Foundation (NSF), Collaborative Research in Computational Neuroscience (CRCNS): Discovering how touch sensors in the bat’s “hand-wing” enable agile flight control (2011619), Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) Center of Excellence (FA9550-14-1-0398NIFTI) and Office of Naval Research (ONR) Multidisciplinary University Research Initiatives (MURI) (N00014-17-1-2736).
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Conceptualization: BLB, GS, SS, CFM; Methodology: BLB, SS, CFM; Formal analysis: BLB, CY; Investigation: BLB, GS; Resources: CFM; Data curation: BLB, CY, CFM; Writing—original draft: BLB; Writing—review and editing: BLB, CY, GS, SS, CFM; Supervision: CFM; Project administration: CFM; Funding acquisition: CFM, SS.
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Boublil, B.L., Yu, C., Shewmaker, G. et al. Ventral wing hairs provide tactile feedback for aerial prey capture in the big brown bat, Eptesicus fuscus. J Comp Physiol A (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-023-01682-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-023-01682-2