Vision in echolocating bats - Fladdermus.net

Animal Behaviour – In Press
Use of vision in prey detection by brown long-eared bats Plecotus auritus
JOHAN EKLÖF 1 & GARETH JONES 2
1 Zoology Department, Göteborg University, Sweden
2 School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, UK
Eklöf & Jones, Use of vision in Plecotus auritus
Correspondence
Johan Eklöf, Zoology Department, Göteborg University, Box 463, SE-405 30
Göteborg, Sweden. E-mail: johan.eklof@zool.gu.se
Gareth Jones, School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Woodland
Road, Bristol BS8 1UG, UK
ABSTRACT
We investigated the ability of brown long-eared bats (Plecotus auritus) to make
use of visual cues when searching for food. By using petri dishes containing
mealworms that were subjected to different levels of illumination, we presented
four bats with different sensory cues: visual cues, sonar cues and a combination
of these. The bats preferred situations where both sonar cues and visual cues
were available, and the visual information was more important than the sonar
cues. The bats did, however, emit echolocation calls throughout the experiments.
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