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Brevity is prevalent in bat short-range communication

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Abstract

Animal communication follows many coding schemes. Less is known about the coding strategy for signal length and rates of use in animal vocal communication. A generalized brevity (negative relation between signal length and frequency of use) is innovatively explored but remains controversial in animal vocal communication. We tested brevity for short-range social and distress sounds from four echolocating bats: adult black-bearded tomb bat Taphozous melanopogon, Mexican free-tailed bat Tadarida brasiliensis, adult greater horseshoe bat Rhinolophus ferrumequinum, and adult least horseshoe bat Rhinolophus pusillus. There was a negative association between duration and number of social but not distress calls emitted. The most frequently emitted social calls were brief, while most distress calls were long. Brevity or lengthiness was consistently selected in vocal communications for each species. Echolocating bats seem to have convergent coding strategy for communication calls. The results provide the evidence of efficient coding in bat social vocalizations, and lay the basis of future researches on the convergence for neural control on bats’ communication calls.

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Fig. 1

Abbreviations

LDC:

Low-duty cycle

HDC:

High-duty cycle

AFM:

Arched frequency modulation

dRFM:

Downward ripple frequency modulation

fRFM:

Fixed ripple frequency modulation

bDFM:

Bent downward frequency modulation

DFM:

Downward frequency modulation

QHFM:

Quasi humped frequency modulation

NB:

Noise burst

dAFM:

Double arched frequency modulation

SFM:

Sinusoidal frequency modulation

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Acknowledgments

The experimental procedures were approved by the department of wildlife administration in Lai bin (Guangxi, P. R. China) and Ping tan (Fujian, P. R. China). We are grateful to Prof. Shuangwei Wang and Dr Guanjun Lu for their assistance in field experiments. We acknowledge M. Brock Fenton, Gerald G. Carter, and two anonymous reviewers for valuable advices and comments on the manuscript. The research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 31030011, 30900166, 31100280) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central University (Grant No. 10SSXT001).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jinlin Key Laboratory of Animal Resource Conservation and Utilization, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, China

    Bo Luo, Tinglei Jiang, Ying Liu, Jing Wang, Aiqing Lin, Xuewen Wei & Jiang Feng

  2. Key Laboratory for Wetland Ecology and Vegetation Restoration of National Environmental Protection, Northeast Normal University, 5268 Renmin Street, Changchun, 130024, China

    Bo Luo, Tinglei Jiang, Ying Liu, Jing Wang, Aiqing Lin, Xuewen Wei & Jiang Feng

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  1. Bo Luo
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  2. Tinglei Jiang
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  3. Ying Liu
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Correspondence to Ying Liu or Jiang Feng.

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Luo, B., Jiang, T., Liu, Y. et al. Brevity is prevalent in bat short-range communication. J Comp Physiol A 199, 325–333 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-013-0793-y

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