Bats use social information within and across species

Abstract

In Focus: Lewanzik, D., Sundaramurthy, A. K., Goerlitz, H. R. (2019). Insectivorous bats integrate social information about species identity, conspecific activity and prey abundance to estimate cost–benefit ratio of interactions. Journal of Animal Ecology, 88, 1462–1473. Social interactions can generate social structures that shape the fate of individuals and populations. A key feature of social environments is the information produced by others. Whether actively shared or obtained via ‘eavesdropping’, individuals of many species use publically available information to guide their decision making in important ways. Lewanzik et al. (2019) explore social information use within and across several echolocating bat species. They experimentally manipulated the content of social information about prey abundance with playback experiments of echolocation calls. All species were found to use heterospecific and conspecific social information about conspecific activity levels and prey abundance. This is a rare experimental confirmation of social information use at a community level.