Do bats make rational decisions?
Claire Hemingway discusses her experiments investigating how different bat species make foraging decisions, and how their choices are shaped by the presence of a competitive decoy.
Bat perfume
Mariana Muñoz-Romo explains her investigations into the biological significance of the odorous golden crust found on the forearms of reproductive male fringe-lipped bats, Trachops cirrhosus.
Are bats in the canopy eavesdropping on the mating signals of their prey?
Amanda Savage investigates how gleaning bats find their prey at different heights in the forest, and whether they eavesdrop on katydid mating signals, not just near the forest floor, but high up into the canopy as well.
Bound by Blood
Simon Ripperger and Gerry Carter explain how the cooperative bonds vampire bats form in captivity persist upon release in the wild (Ripperger SP, Carter GG, Duda N, Koelpin A, Cassens B, Kapitza R, Josic D, Berrío-Martínez J, Page RA, Mayer F. 2019. Vampire bats that cooperate in the lab maintain their social networks in the wild. Current Biology. 10.1016/j.cub.2019.10.024. PDF)
When does noise serve as an informational cue?
Inga Geipel investigates how bats use the sound of rain to time their emergence from the safety of the roost (Geipel I, Smeekes MJ, Halfwerk W, Page RA. 2019. Noise as an informational cue for decision-making: the sound of rain delays bat emergence. The Journal of Experimental Biology. jeb.192005. PDF)
Sexy city frogs
Wouter Halfwerk describes the mating preferences, and the risk of predation and parasitism, in city versus forest frogs (Halfwerk W, Blaas M, Kramer L, Hijner N, Trillo PA, Bernal XE, Page RA, Goutte S, Ryan MJ, Ellers J. 2019. Adaptive changes in sexual signaling in response to urbanization. Nature Ecology & Evolution. 3: 374-380. doi:10.1038/s41559-018-0751-8. PDF
New Bat Behavior Discovered
Jenna Kohles discusses fledging behavior in baby fruit-eating bats (Kohles JE, Page RA, Dechmann DKN, O’Mara MT (2018) Rapid behavioral changes during early development in Peters’ tent-making bat (Uroderma bilobatum). PLoS ONE 13(10): e0205351. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0205351. PDF)
Frog-eating Bats: Smithsonian Scientist Rachel Page
STRI Staff Scientist Rachel Page explains how she became a bat biologist.