Echolocation in soft-furred tree mice

• Published in: Science
• Main Authors: He, Kai, Liu, Qi, Xu, Dong-Ming, Qi, Fei-Yan, Bai, Jing, He, Shui-Wang, Chen, Peng, Zhou, Xin, Cai, Wan-Zhi, Chen, Zhong-Zheng, Liu, Zhen, Jiang, Xue-Long, Shi, Peng
• Other Authors: National Natural Science Foundation of China, China Postdoctoral Science Foundation, National Key Research and Development Program, Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research program, China Postdoctoral Science
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2021
• Subjects: toothed whales
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aay1513; https://syndication.highwire.org/content/doi/10.1126/science.aay1513; https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.aay1513

New echolocator Echolocation is a well demonstrated convergent sensory mode in bats and toothed whales. These lineages are not closely related, and this sense might be more broadly distributed than we recognize. Using a suite of approaches, He et al. show that the lineage of soft-furred tree mice (genus Typhlomys ) includes multiple echolocators. Clear evidence of the behavioral use of echolocation under fully dark conditions was supported by the convergence of ear bone morphology and hearing-related genes with other echolocating mammals. Science , aay1513, this issue p. eaay1513