Alyssa R. Wheeler, Kara A. Fulton, Jason E. Gaudette, Ryan A. Simmons, Ikuo Matsuo, James A. Simmons
Abstract
Big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus) emit trains of brief, wideband frequency-modulated (FM) echolocation sounds and use echoes of these sounds to orient, find insects, and guide flight through vegetation. They are observed to emit sounds that alternate between short and long inter-pulse intervals (IPIs), forming sonar sound groups. The occurrence of these strobe groups has been linked to flight in cluttered acoustic environments, but how exactly bats use sonar sound groups to orient and navigate is still a mystery. Here, the production of sound groups during clutter navigation was examined. Controlled flight experiments were conducted where the proximity of the nearest obstacles was systematically decreased while the extended scene was kept constant. Four bats flew along a corridor of varying widths (100, 70, and 40 cm) bounded by rows of vertically hanging plastic chains while in-flight echolocation calls were recorded. Bats shortened their IPIs for more rapid spatial sampling and also grouped their sounds more tightly when flying in narrower corridors. Bats emitted echolocation calls with progressively shorter IPIs over the course of a flight, and began their flights by emitting shorter starting IPI calls when clutter was denser. The percentage of sound groups containing 3 or more calls increased with increasing clutter proximity. Moreover, IPI sequences having internal structure become more pronounced when corridor width narrows. A novel metric for analyzing the temporal organization of sound sequences was developed, and the results indicate that the time interval between echolocation calls depends heavily on the preceding time interval. The occurrence of specific IPI patterns were dependent upon clutter, which suggests that sonar sound grouping may be an adaptive strategy for coping with pulse-echo ambiguity in cluttered surroundings.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 4. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 23 February 2021.
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#6,978,953
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Outputs from Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience
#1,152
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#114,658
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Outputs of similar age from Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience
#21
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Altmetric has tracked 22,879,161 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 68th percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 3,186 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 11.3. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 62% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 69 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 69% of its contemporaries.
