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Individual specific contact calls of pallid bats (Antrozous pallidus) attract conspecifics at roosting sites

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Abstract

Contact calls are utilized by several bird and mammal species to maintain group cohesion and coordinate group movement. From a signal design perspective, contact calls typically exhibit acoustic features that make them easily localizable and encode information about individual or group identity. Pallid bats (Antrozous pallidus) are unusual among vespertilionids in that they often emit a loud, partially audible frequency-modulated social call several times in rapid succession while in flight. This call appears to function as a contact call in that it is frequently given when bats return from foraging and perform circular flights before entering a crevice roost. However, the degree to which pallid bats respond to the calls of conspecifics and what information is provided in the call is unknown. Thus, the goal of this study was to investigate pallid bat calling behavior to determine if calls attract roostmates or elicit responses from them and provide sufficient information for individual recognition. In playback studies, we found that contact calls, elicit calls, and approaches and that free-flying bats respond more to familiar than unfamiliar calls. In addition, analysis of frequency and temporal measurements of calls collected from multiple sites and spectral cross correlation analysis of calls recorded from the same radio-tagged bats on multiple evenings revealed that the frequency pattern of contact calls is highly repeatable over time within individuals but exhibits significant differences among individuals. Thus, contact call structure appears to be unique to individuals and stable through time, which makes these calls well-suited for roostmate recognition.

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Acknowledgments

All field protocols were approved by the University of Maryland Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (Protocol R-08-39). We would like to thank Emily Muns and Stephanie Rihl for assistance with field work, Tom Rodhouse for help with locating study sites, Kevin Misner for assisting with the videotape analysis, and Jason Douglas for help measuring calls. We are also grateful to the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs and the National Park Service for allowing access to the field sites as well as the staff at Hancock Field Station in Clarno, Oregon for providing support during the field season. Finally, we would also like to thank Jackie Metheny, Beatrice Mao, Julie Samy, Genevieve Spanjer Wright, and two anonymous reviewers for comments that helped to improve the manuscript. This work was supported by research grants from Sigma Xi, the Cosmos Club Foundation of Washington DC, the American Society of Mammalogists, and the American Philosophical Society to B.D.A. as well as summer support provided by the BEES graduate program at the University of Maryland to B.D.A.

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  1. Department of Biology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Bryan D. Arnold & Gerald S. Wilkinson

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  1. Bryan D. Arnold
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Correspondence to Bryan D. Arnold.

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Communicated by G. Jones

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Arnold, B.D., Wilkinson, G.S. Individual specific contact calls of pallid bats (Antrozous pallidus) attract conspecifics at roosting sites. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 65, 1581–1593 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-011-1168-4

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