THE ORIENTATION BEHAVIOR OF THE LESSER SPEARNOSED BAT, PHYLLOSTOMUS DISCOLOR (CHIROPTERA) IN A MODEL ROOST - CONCURRENCE OF VISUAL, ECHOACOUSTICAL AND ENDOGENOUS SPATIAL INFORMATION
P. Holler et U. Schmidt, THE ORIENTATION BEHAVIOR OF THE LESSER SPEARNOSED BAT, PHYLLOSTOMUS DISCOLOR (CHIROPTERA) IN A MODEL ROOST - CONCURRENCE OF VISUAL, ECHOACOUSTICAL AND ENDOGENOUS SPATIAL INFORMATION, Journal of comparative physiology. A, Sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology, 179(2), 1996, pp. 245-254
The orientation behaviour of bats (Phyllostomus discolor, Phyllostomid
ae), flying inside an octagonal ''roost-like'' chamber (o: 100 cm; h:
150 cm) was examined. It has been shown that the bats begin turning ma
noeuvres during flight by turning their head towards the direction the
y intend to proceed to. During early phases of the flights, cumulative
navigation errors were evident, indicating that endogenous spatial in
formation plays a major role in the orientation of the bats. During la
ter phases of the flight this error is diminished again. So it can be
concluded that the bats start to use exogenous spatial information for
orientation while approaching the target. In order to investigate the
relative importance of vision, echolocation and endogenous spatial in
formation for approaching the roost, the landing lattices inside the t
est arena were changed for non-grid dummies. We found that: 1. combine
d visual and endogenous information are more important than echoacoust
ical cues, 2. the bats learned quickly to switch their orientation beh
aviour in order to get a better performance in avoiding the dummies, 3
. the learning performance was influenced by the visual similarity of
dummies and the real landing lattice.