Spatio-temporal dynamics of an acoustic communication network: how echolocating bats communicate and orient in free-flying groups

交流和运动是动物之间进行社会互动的关键行为。在回声定位蝙蝠中，交流和运动是自然结合的：在飞行过程中，蝙蝠通过倾听自己强大的叫声的回声来与自己交流。其他蝙蝠也能听到这种源源不断的叫声，并将发送者的位置和行为告知它们。除了回声定位呼叫外，蝙蝠在飞行过程中还会发出各种社交呼叫，以进行个体间的交流。这两种声学行为使蝙蝠成为最响亮的哺乳动物；它们在飞行过程中的声学通信网络密集，时空动态，涉及不同的声学刺激，通常来自不同的物种。因此，回声定位蝙蝠是揭示经过进化测试的通信和导航策略的理想选择，这将促进我们对行为原理的洞察，并刺激生物启发的工程学和机器人。结合三维飞行路线跟踪、呼叫分析、回放实验和空间建模，我将研究蝙蝠如何跟踪、躲避和相互交流(空中交通管制)，以及这如何影响蝙蝠群体的新兴空间模式。我将量化多种自由飞行蝙蝠在不同飞行情况下的飞行轨迹和个体间的反应，并将它们的飞行行为与发出的叫声联系起来。回放不同物种和不同距离的回声定位和社会呼唤将测试物种间和距离对飞行方向、轨迹测量和多个个体的总体空间使用的影响。在运动生态学的框架下，我将使用获得的数据来建立随机状态空间模型，并测试跟随和逃避飞行的行为规则。因此，我的目标是实现一种基于机制的理解，了解个体的发声和飞行行为如何影响其他个体的飞行以及整个群体的紧急模式。

Communication and movement are crucial behaviours that enable social interactions between animals. In echolocating bats, communication and movement are naturally coupled: during flight, bats ‘communicate with themselves’ by listening for echoes of their own powerful calls. This constant stream of calls is also audible to other bats and informs them about the sender`s position and behaviour. Besides echolocation calls, bats also emit a variety of social calls during flight for interindividual communication. These two acoustic behaviours render bats the most vocal of mammals; their acoustic communication networks during flight are dense, spatio-temporally dynamic and involve diverse acoustic stimuli, often from different species. Echolocating bats are thus ideal to reveal evolution-tested communication and navigation strategies, which will advance our insight into behavioural principles and stimulate bio-inspired engineering and robotics.Combining three-dimensional flight path tracking, call analysis, playback experiments and spatial modelling, I will study how bats follow, evade and communicate with each other (‘air traffic control’) and how this affects the emergent spatial patterns of bat groups. I will quantify flight trajectories and inter-individual reactions of multiple free-ranging bats in different flight situations and relate their flight behaviour to emitted calls. Playbacks of echolocation and social calls of different species and from different distances will test for interspecific and distance-dependent effects on flight direction, trajectory measures and overall space use of multiple individuals. In a framework of movement ecology, I will use the obtained data to develop stochastic state-space models and to test behavioural rules for following and evasion flight. I thus aim to achieve a mechanism-based understanding of how individual vocal and flight behaviour affects the flight of other individuals and the emergent patterns of whole groups.