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Overcoming Sensory Uncertainty: Factors Affecting Foraging Decisions in Frog-Eating Bats

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Psychological Mechanisms in Animal Communication

Part of the book series: Animal Signals and Communication ((ANISIGCOM,volume 5))

Abstract

Predators forage in complex environments where they must make fast, high-stakes decisions. Foraging decisions are influenced by biases in sensory perception and cognitive processing, learned and remembered information , and environmental factors such as prey availability. In this chapter, we discuss some of the factors that influence decision-making in a neotropical predatory bat species, the fringe-lipped bat , Trachops cirrhosus. This bat hunts frogs and insects by eavesdropping on prey-produced sounds, but its foraging decisions are also influenced by other sources of information, including echoacoustic and gustatory cues . T. cirrhosus quickly learns novel associations between prey cue and quality, can use social information acquired from conspecifics, and forms long-term memories of prey sounds. Research on perception and cognition in this predatory bat, all conducted with wild or wild-caught and temporarily housed individuals, has made this species one of the most well-understood, non-model systems for predator decision-making. Yet there is still much that remains unknown about how and why these predators make the foraging decisions they do.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Mike Ryan, Merlin Tuttle, Ryan Taylor, Laurel Symes, Cory Miller, and Mark Bee for their helpful feedback on this chapter. We are also deeply indebted to the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI). The body of work that has emerged over the past four decades on the sensory and cognitive ecology of the frog-eating bat would not have been possible without STRI’s ongoing support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Balboa, Ancón, Republic of Panama

    Rachel A. Page

  2. Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Patricia L. Jones

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  1. Rachel A. Page
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Correspondence to Rachel A. Page .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities, Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA

    Mark A. Bee

  2. Department of Psychology, Neurosciences Graduate Program, University of California, La Jolla, California, USA

    Cory T. Miller

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Page, R.A., Jones, P.L. (2016). Overcoming Sensory Uncertainty: Factors Affecting Foraging Decisions in Frog-Eating Bats. In: Bee, M., Miller, C. (eds) Psychological Mechanisms in Animal Communication. Animal Signals and Communication, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48690-1_11

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