Abstract
Behavioral plasticity is a key feature allowing animals to broaden their dietary niche when novel food resources become available, and long-fingered bats provide an appropriate model system to study the underpinnings of behavioral plasticity, since although generally being an insectivorous species, some individuals have been reported to catch fish. Aiming to get insight into the origin of fishing behavior in long-fingered bats, we studied in the field the differences in sensorial and mechanical reactions to insect-like (stationary) and fish-like (temporary) prey stimuli between well-known piscivorous and strictly insectivorous individuals. Both piscivorous and insectivorous individuals exhibited a qualitatively similar reaction to temporary target stimuli (longer and deeper dips and terminal echolocation phase skewed towards buzz I compared to stationary stimuli). Nevertheless, the quantitative differences observed in the sensorial and mechanical features (the intensity of the shift was significantly greater in piscivorous than in insectivorous individuals) show that piscivorous individuals have honed their capture technique likely enhancing the fishing success. Thus, our results suggest that the fishing technique was developed from a primary reaction shared by all long-fingered bats. All individuals seem to be mechanically and sensorially adapted to detect and capture fish, although under appropriate environmental conditions, they would further improve their technique by experience and/or social learning.
Highlights
Environmental variation forces organisms to be in a continual process of adaptation
A considerably larger displacement of the attack characteristics from stationary to temporary target can be observed in piscivorous individuals than in insectivorous individuals
When we conceived the study, we assumed that similar responses between piscivorous and insectivorous individuals to fish-like stimuli would indicate a primary ability to recognize and capture fish shared by all long-fingered bats, while insectivorous individuals responding to fish-like stimuli using insect-capture-like attacks would indicate that experience and/or learning played an important role in piscivorous individuals in modifying the hunting technique to catch fish
Summary
Environmental variation forces organisms to be in a continual process of adaptation. The ability to adjust to novel conditions faster or better than their competitors is what makes the difference in terms of individual survival [1]. Behavior is at the forefront of such adaptive capacity. The ability of animals to modify their behavior, namely behavioral plasticity, is the result of the complex mixture of innate traits and those acquired through learning [2,3,4,5]. Animals seem to be born with a predisposition to perform a behavior, which is later modified to a larger or lesser degree by experience or learning [6].
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