What determines the information update rate in echolocating bats.

The rate of sensory update is one of the most important parameters of any sensory system. The acquisition rate of most sensory systems is fixed and has been optimized by evolution to the needs of the animal. Echolocating bats have the ability to adjust their sensory update rate which is determined by the intervals between emissions - the inter-pulse intervals (IPI).

Pregnancy-related sensory deficits might impair foraging in echolocating bats.

Background: Reproduction entails substantial demands throughout its distinct stages. The mammalian gestation period imposes various energetic costs and movement deficits, but its effects on the sensory system are poorly understood. Bats rely heavily on active sensing, using echolocation to forage in complete darkness, or when lighting is uncertain.

Echolocating bats rapidly adjust their mouth gape to control spatial acquisition when scanning a target.

Background: As well known to any photographer, controlling the "field of view" offers an extremely powerful mechanism by which to adjust target acquisition. Only a few natural sensory systems can actively control their field of view (e.g.

TrackUSF, a novel tool for automated ultrasonic vocalization analysis, reveals modified calls in a rat model of autism.

Background: Various mammalian species emit ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs), which reflect their emotional state and mediate social interactions. USVs are usually analyzed by manual or semi-automated methodologies that categorize discrete USVs according to their structure in the frequency-time domains. This laborious analysis hinders the effective use of USVs as a readout for high-throughput analysis of behavioral changes in animals.

Adaptive learning and recall of motor-sensory sequences in adult echolocating bats.

Background: Learning to adapt to changes in the environment is highly beneficial. This is especially true for echolocating bats that forage in diverse environments, moving between open spaces to highly complex ones. Bats are known for their ability to rapidly adjust their sensing according to auditory information gathered from the environment within milliseconds but can they also benefit from longer adaptive processes? In this study, we examined adult bats' ability to slowly adapt their sensing strategy to a new type of environment they have never experienced for such long durations, and to then maintain this learned echolocation strategy over time.

Segregating signal from noise through movement in echolocating bats.

Segregating signal from noise is one of the most fundamental problems shared by all biological and human-engineered sensory systems. In echolocating bats that search for small objects such as tiny insects in the presence of large obstacles (e.g.

An annotated dataset of Egyptian fruit bat vocalizations across varying contexts and during vocal ontogeny.

Animal acoustic communication research depends on our ability to record the vocal behaviour of different species. Only rarely do we have the opportunity to continuously follow the vocal behaviour of a group of individuals of the same species for a long period of time. Here, we provide a database of Egyptian fruit bat vocalizations, which were continuously recorded in the lab in several groups simultaneously for more than a year.

Everyday bat vocalizations contain information about emitter, addressee, context, and behavior.

Animal vocal communication is often diverse and structured. Yet, the information concealed in animal vocalizations remains elusive. Several studies have shown that animal calls convey information about their emitter and the context.

Vocal learning in a social mammal: Demonstrated by isolation and playback experiments in bats.

The evolution of human language is shrouded in mystery as it is unparalleled in the animal kingdom. Whereas vocal learning is crucial for the development of speech in humans, it seems rare among nonhuman animals. Songbirds often serve as a model for vocal learning, but the lack of a mammalian model hinders our quest for the origin of this capability.