It's not black or white-on the range of vision and echolocation in echolocating bats
It's not black or white-on the range of vision and echolocation in echolocating bats
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DOI：
10.3389/fphys.2013.00248
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发表时间：
2013-01-01
影响因子：
4
通讯作者：
Yovel, Yossi
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Boonman, Arjan;Bar-On, Yinon;Yovel, Yossi
世界上大约有1000种蝙蝠利用回声定位来导航、定位和探测昆虫猎物。许多蝙蝠在黄昏时从它们的栖息地出来，在还有光的时候开始觅食。然而，目前尚不清楚这些蝙蝠的导航，甚至猎物探测，在何种程度上以及在何种程度上是由视觉辅助的。本文比较了依靠不同觅食策略的两种蝙蝠（小叶鼻蝠和库利Pipistrellus kuhlii）的回声定位和视觉探测范围。研究发现，在中等光照条件下（1-10勒克斯），回声定位比视觉定位更有利于探测小昆虫，而视觉定位更有利于监测远处的景观元素。因此，我们假设蝙蝠不断地整合通过两种感觉方式获得的信息。我们认为，在进化过程中，回声定位被改进为与视觉结合检测越来越小的目标。要做到这一点，听到超声波的能力是一个先决条件，这在小型哺乳动物中很容易得到，但在许多其他动物群体中却没有。利用超声波探测微小目标（如昆虫）的能力，为蝙蝠开辟了一个巨大的夜间生态位，并可能刺激了回声定位和觅食策略的多样化。
Around 1000 species of bats in the world use echolocation to navigate, orient, and detect insect prey. Many of these bats emerge from their roost at dusk and start foraging when there is still light available. It is however unclear in what way and to which extent navigation, or even prey detection in these bats is aided by vision. Here we compare the echolocation and visual detection ranges of two such species of bats which rely on different foraging strategies (Rhinopoma microphyllum and Pipistrellus kuhlii). We find that echolocation is better than vision for detecting small insects even in intermediate light levels (1-10 lux), while vision is advantageous for monitoring far-away landscape elements in both species. We thus hypothesize that, bats constantly integrate information acquired by the two sensory modalities. We suggest that during evolution, echolocation was refined to detect increasingly small targets in conjunction with using vision. To do so, the ability to hear ultrasonic sound is a prerequisite which was readily available in small mammals, but absent in many other animal groups. The ability to exploit ultrasound to detect very small targets, such as insects, has opened up a large nocturnal niche to bats and may have spurred diversification in both echolocation and foraging tactics.