Bat songs as acoustic beacons - male territorial songs attract dispersing females.

ABSTRACT: Male song in birds and mammals is important for repelling rivals, stimulating mates or attracting them to a specific location. Nevertheless, direct experimental evidence for the mate attraction function of male song is limited to a few studies. Here, we provide strong experimental evidence that male songs attract wild female bats (Saccopteryx bilineata). Playbacks of territorial songs reliably elicited phonotaxis in females but not males. Most females captured during playbacks were subadults searching for new colonies to settle in. In S. bilineata, multiple males sing simultaneously at dawn and dusk, thereby creating a conspicuous chorus which encodes information on colony identity and size. Since territorial songs have a large signalling range, male songs constitute acoustic beacons which

SUBMITTER: Knornschild M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5654967 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature