Abstract
Communication between group members is mediated by a diverse range of signals. Contact calls are produced by many species of birds and mammals to maintain group cohesion and associations among individuals. Contact calls in bats are typically relatively low-frequency social calls, produced only for communication. However, echolocation calls (higher in frequency and used primarily for orientation and prey detection) can also facilitate interaction among individuals and location of conspecifics in the roost. We studied calling behaviour of brown long-eared bats (Plecotus auritus) during return to maternity roosts in response to playbacks of social and echolocation calls. We hypothesised that calling by conspecifics would elicit responses in colony members. Bat responses (inspection flights and social calls production) were significantly highest during social call and echolocation call playbacks than during noise (control) playbacks. We suggest that social calling in maternity roosts of brown long-eared bat evolved to maintain associations among roostmates, rather than to find roosts or roostmates, because this species is strongly faithful to roosts and the social groups and roosts are stable over time and space. Living in a stable social group requires recognition of group members and affiliation of social bonds with group members, features that may be mediated by vocal signals.
Highlights
Many animals aggregate with conspecifics to form permanent or periodically stable groups (Krebs and Davies 2012)
Social calls were emitted in series or as double or triple calls of single multiharmonic calls with usually two frequency peaks at around 14 kHz and 20–25 kHz
In the model explaining the variation in production of echolocation sequences, there was a significant interaction between the phase of experiment and type of stimuli in the playback: bats produced more echolocation sequences when stimulated with the playback of social calls than with the playback of echolocation calls (Table 1)
Summary
Many animals aggregate with conspecifics to form permanent or periodically stable groups (Krebs and Davies 2012). Social integration of the group members during reunion plays an important role in social species (Bradbury and Vehrencamp 2011). Coordination of group activity and information on the location and identity of group members can be mediated by signaling. Many species of birds and mammals maintain contact by acoustic signaling, emitting separation or contact calls (Marler 2004; Kondo and Watanabe 2009; Fichtel and Manser 2010). Reunions in fission–fusion social systems commonly involve greeting displays in some mammals and birds that facilitate recognition, expression of intention and mutual affiliation, reassurance, or assessment (Bradbury and Vehrencamp 2011)
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