Temporal patterns of individual and group foraging behaviour in the short-nosed fruit bat, Cynopterus sphinx, in south India

The short-nosed fruit bat, Cynopterus sphinx, begins to visit fruit-bearing trees about 30 min after sunset. Individual bats often hover near or land on fruits or on nearby branches to remove whole or parts of fruits with the ir mouth. These bats seldom remain in the fruit-bearing trees to feed, but instead carry fruits to feeding roosts, repeating this behaviour several ti mes throughout the night. Analysis of the temporal distribution of feeding behaviour has revealed two peaks of activity, one in the pre-midnight hours when bats fed mostly on 'steady state' fruits, and another during the post -midnight hours when bats fed on 'big-bang' fruits. Only solitary bats visi ted and fed on species with steady state fruiting phenologies, whereas grou ps of bats regularly visited and fed on species with big-bang fruiting phen ologies. Thus, plant species which produce large numbers of fruits appear t o promote group foraging during the latter hours of the night. It is sugges ted that the temporal use of available fruits in south India made it possib le for C. sphinx to successfully exploit them, and thereby reduced interfer ence competition with conspecifics.