Abstract

In the fall of 2022, I participated in an independent research project under the mentorship of Dr.Kloepper in the Ecological Acoustics and Behavior lab. I decided to delve into a project that shed light on an underrepresented animal, bats. Bats are proficient at producing echolocation pulses that they utilize to their advantage to hunt and navigate cluttered areas. I investigated how Tadarida brasiliensis (the Brazilian free-tailed bat), that lives in colonies of thousands, may shift their echolocation so they can distinguish their own calls from the cacophony of sound when flying all together. A trained Harris’s hawk carried a microphone/camera unit and flew through a bat swarm to record the soundscape of the swarm as it passed through. With the audio and visual data synced, I compared the bats’ calls between the outside and the middle of the swarm. I found that the overall acoustic environment shifted, generating more energy in higher frequencies when in the middle of the swarm, while the outside remained in a lower range. This kind of behavior may aid bats in differentiating their sounds from the bats next to them in a crowded area, allowing them to live and move in large aggregations with ease.

Publication Date

Spring 2023

Journal Title

Inquiry Journal

Mentor

Laura Kloepper

Publisher

Durham, NH: Hamel Center for Undergraduate Research, University of New Hampshire

Document Type

Article

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