Mutual mother-pup acoustic identification in Asian particolored bats.

Abstract

In many vertebrates, vocal communication is crucial in parent-offspring interactions, and parents are often able to discriminate between the calls of their own and others' offspring. There are many reports on the unidirectional recognition of isolation calls of pups by maternal bats, but few studies on the ability of bat pups to recognize maternal acoustic signals. In this study, we investigated whether the echolocation pulses of female Asian particolored bats (Vespertilio sinensis) and isolation calls of pups differ statistically among individuals. We used two-choice playback experiments to test whether the mothers and pups of V.sinensis can recognize each other by acoustic signals. Both the echolocation pulses of mother bats and the isolation calls of pups contained sufficient individual characteristics. Playback experiments showed that mothers were able to recognize isolation calls of pups, and most pups greater than 12 days old were able to distinguish echolocation pulses of their own mother from those of other mothers. This is the first use of two-choice acoustic signal playback experiments to confirm that pups can recognize their mothers by echolocation calls. The results provide behavioral evidence for bidirectional recognition of acoustic signals between mothers and infants in frequency-modulated type bats.