3649-08 IICB.indd - Faculty of Biological Sciences - University of ...

Dean Waters
BSc Ecology (UEA);
PhD (Bristol);
Lecturer, Senior Lecturer in Zoology (1995-)
Contact: d.a.waters@leeds.ac.uk
Bioacoustics and
bio-inspired engineering
My research focuses on the way that
animals, including humans, use sound
to communicate and to discover
things about their environment. Much
of this work involves bats and their
echolocation system, one of the most
sophisticated uses of sound in the
animal kingdom. The way that bats
process sonar information is of great
interest to engineers as bats can
apparently outperform all current sonar
technology. Studies of the echolocation
system of bats has inspired recent
work on sound in virtual reality for
human use, ultrasonic guide canes for
the blind, and advances in medical
ultrasonics, underwater remote vehicles
and geological surveys. Work on the
sonar calls of the only genus of fruitbats
to echolocate has shown them
to have a unique structure not unlike
the sonar calls of dolphins. These calls
appear to be optimally adapted to focus
energy at specific regions of the bat’s
auditory system to enhance detection
and their structure, quite unlike
those of insectivourous bats, poses
some interesting questions about the
evolution of echolocation in bats.
I am also interested in the role of sound
in the acoustic war between bats and
moths. Moths can detect the sonar
calls of bats and take evasive action to
avoid being eaten. However, bats have
evolved countermeasures that make
their calls less apparent to the moths.
This cycle of predator and prey leads
to some very interesting evolutionary
and neurophysiological questions such
as the generation of unpredictable
escape responses and the detection
of weak signals in noise using
stochastic resonance.
Funding for these projects comes from
the BBSRC and EPSRC.
More information:
http://www.fbs.leeds.ac.uk/staff/profile.
php?staff=DAW
Representative Publications
Holland, R.A, Waters, D A & Rayner, J MV
(2004) Echolocation signal structure in the
megachiropteran bat Rousettus aegyptiacus
(Geoffroy, 1810). Journal of Experimental
Biology 207: 4361-4369
Waters, DA. (2003). Bats and moths: what is
there left to learn? Physiological Entomology
28: 237-250
Waters, DA & Vollrath, C. (2003) Echolocation
performance in the fruit-bat Rousettus
aegyptiacus. Acta Chiroptologica 5: 209-219
Wong, J & Waters, DA. (2001) The
synchronisation of signal emission with
wingbeat during the approach phase in soprano
pipistrelles (Pipistrellus pygmaeus). Journal of
Experimental Biology 204: 575-583