Signal characteristics and echolocation challenges of Mexican free-tailed bats during high-speed flight

Abstract

Female Mexican free-tailed bats (Tadarida brasiliensis) form large maternal colonies numbering up to several million. After their nightly emergence and feeding, they return to the roost from high elevations and speeds nearing 100 km/h. At these speeds, the bats should experience, among other things, difficulties in object distance encoding due to the large distance travelled before echo returns and significant Doppler shifts to their echoes. Further, they face navigational challenges from nearby conspecifics. In this study, we characterized the acoustics of returning Mexican free-tailed bats and investigated for possible Doppler shift compensation during various flight speeds. Synchronized acoustic and thermal imagery recordings were conducted at several caves across multiple mornings during cave re-entry. Call sequences for individual bats were extracted for different flight speeds, and changes in call parameters were compared within each call sequence. First basic analysis indicates a possible lack of D...