Bioacoustics, hearing, and the integrative physiology of bats

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The long-term goal of my research is to decipher how the nervous system integrates information to produce adaptive behaviour. To achieve this in the short-term, my lab will conduct novel studies on bioacoustics, hearing, and the integrative physiology of bats. My lab maintains Canada's only captive research colony of insectivorous bats and this unique resource affords us with diverse opportunities to study bat biology. Bats are ideal subjects for bioacoustics work because we know the sounds important to bats and this simplifies the effort to discover underlying neural mechanisms. Sound recordings will measure how bats adjust echolocation calls in development and when calling in different environments and/or with conspecifics. Knowing how bats integrate echoes and alter their calls has practical applications for human auditory perception and automated technologies. To complement our biosonar work, we will record responses of single auditory neurons to understand how the midbrain integrates inputs from the cochlea and brainstem to create cells in the midbrain with novel response properties that allow bats to form images of their environment with echolocation. In a novel developmental study, we will record population responses from the central auditory system of bat pups born in our breeding colony to understand how hearing changes in early life. Understanding how the bat's brain matures and processes sounds will provide new knowledge about general mechanisms of hearing relevant to all mammals, including humans. One focus of my integrative physiology work is cutaneous healing. Bat wings serve locomotory and physiological roles, and biologists routinely biopsy them to mark bats or obtain tissue for molecular work. Although wing injuries are common in nature, little is known about wound healing. We know the tail membrane heals faster than the wing, likely because of its increased thickness and blood supply, but we don't know how seasonality, membrane vasculature, and wound morphology impact healing. While advancing knowledge on tissue repair, this work provides baseline data important to conservation because hibernating bats can suffer extensive membrane damage after surviving an infection with the fungus that causes white-nose syndrome. Another focus of my integrative physiology work examines hormone production, absorption, and transfer in bats. We know where estradiol-the smallest and most powerful sex steroid-binds in bat tissues, and that it can transfer between cohabitating conspecifics. This indicates that estradiol can act as a pheromone, with males possibly inducing sexual receptivity and ovulation in females. We will measure natural levels of other steroids in bat urine, blood, and glandular secretions across the breeding cycle to understand how hormonal signals are integrated to modify behaviour. My diverse and rigorous research program seeks to explain how bats integrate exogenous and endogenous signals to generate adaptive behaviour.