Harvest rates and foraging strategy of Carollia perspicillata (Chiroptera: Phyllostomidae) in an artificial food patch

Abstract

An organism’s foraging strategy depends on its ability to acquire and use information from food patches. A forager that does not obtain information from a food patch should remain there for a fixed time or a fixed amount of harvest. Foragers that obtain partial or complete information from the patch should be able to estimate costs and benefits from its exploitation. The foraging strategy used by a forager can be determined using the giving-up density (GUD) technique. The GUD is the amount of food left by a forager after feeding in a patch with diminishing returns. We constructed an artificial feeder to examine the foraging strategy of the short-tailed fruit bat Carollia perspicillata (Chiroptera: Phyllostomidae). In this feeder, the bat’s harvest rate declined with time, i.e., they experienced diminishing returns. When offered feeders with different initial food densities, bats consumed proportionately more from rich patches than from poor ones, but they equalized GUDs. When offered feeders with different concentrations of sugar (i.e., different energy content), the higher the sugar concentration in the food, the more they consumed. Altogether, the evidence indicates that these fruit bats used complete, unbiased information to decide how much time to stay in a food patch.