Adaptive learning and recall of motor-sensory sequences in adult echolocating bats

Mor Taub,Yossi Yovel

doi:10.1186/s12915-021-01099-w

Abstract

BackgroundLearning to adapt to changes in the environment is highly beneficial. This is especially true for echolocating bats that forage in diverse environments, moving between open spaces to highly complex ones. Bats are known for their ability to rapidly adjust their sensing according to auditory information gathered from the environment within milliseconds but can they also benefit from longer adaptive processes? In this study, we examined adult bats’ ability to slowly adapt their sensing strategy to a new type of environment they have never experienced for such long durations, and to then maintain this learned echolocation strategy over time.ResultsWe show that over a period of weeks, Pipistrellus kuhlii bats gradually adapt their pre-takeoff echolocation sequence when moved to a constantly cluttered environment. After adopting this improved strategy, the bats retained an ability to instantaneously use it when placed back in a similarly cluttered environment, even after spending many months in a significantly less cluttered environment.ConclusionsWe demonstrate long-term adaptive flexibility in sensory acquisition in adult animals. Our study also gives further insight into the importance of sensory planning in the initiation of a precise sensorimotor behavior such as approaching for landing.

Highlights

Learning to adapt to changes in the environment is highly beneficial
We found that in such cluttered environments, bats assess the distance of the target using echolocation before take-off, shortening the inter-group-interval when the target is closer [27]
In accordance with the reduction in emission intervals, there was a significant decrease in pulse intensity over time but only two individuals significantly reduced calling intensity (See Additional file 4: Table S1 for individual statistics). These changes in echolocation are in-line with the direction of the adjustments that are well documented in a cluttered environment, i.e., shortening the intervals between pulses and decreasing their intensity [19, 33], but such adjustments typically occur within milliseconds

Summary

Introduction

Learning to adapt to changes in the environment is highly beneficial. This is especially true for echolocating bats that forage in diverse environments, moving between open spaces to highly complex ones. Proper sensing depends on multiple processes, such as filtering sensory information, sensory adaptations (e.g., pupil dilation), and active sensing (e.g., eye movements). The ontogeny of these processes is far from understood both at the behavioral and at the neural levels. Humans are known to move their eyes differently depending on the task [15], but it is not known if they can learn a new eye movement strategy that is beneficial for a task they have never encountered before This is what we tested in echolocating bats

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