Scanning Behavior in Echolocating Common Pipistrelle Bats (Pipistrellus pipistrellus)
Echolocating bats construct an auditory world sequentially by analyzing successive pulse-echo pairs. Many other mammals rely upon a visual world, acquired by sequential foveal fixations connected by visual gaze saccades. We investigated the scanning behavior of bats and compared it to visual scannin...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:3620330 2023-05-15T17:59:52+02:00 Scanning Behavior in Echolocating Common Pipistrelle Bats (Pipistrellus pipistrellus) Seibert, Anna-Maria Koblitz, Jens C. Denzinger, Annette Schnitzler, Hans-Ulrich 2013-04-08 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3620330 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23580164 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0060752 en eng Public Library of Science http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3620330 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23580164 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0060752 This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. CC-BY Research Article Text 2013 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0060752 2013-09-04T22:12:23Z Echolocating bats construct an auditory world sequentially by analyzing successive pulse-echo pairs. Many other mammals rely upon a visual world, acquired by sequential foveal fixations connected by visual gaze saccades. We investigated the scanning behavior of bats and compared it to visual scanning. We assumed that each pulse-echo pair evaluation corresponds to a foveal fixation and that sonar beam movements between pulses can be seen as acoustic gaze saccades. We used a two-dimensional 16 microphone array to determine the sonar beam direction of succeeding pulses and to characterize the three dimensional scanning behavior in the common pipistrelle bat (Pipistrellus pipistrellus) flying in the field. We also used variations of signal amplitude of single microphone recordings as indicator for scanning behavior in open space. We analyzed 33 flight sequences containing more than 700 echolocation calls to determine bat positions, source levels, and beam aiming. When searching for prey and orienting in space, bats moved their sonar beam in all directions, often alternately back and forth. They also produced sequences with irregular or no scanning movements. When approaching the array, the scanning movements were much smaller and the beam was moved over the array in small steps. Differences in the scanning pattern at various recording sites indicated that the scanning behavior depended on the echolocation task that was being performed. The scanning angles varied over a wide range and were often larger than the maximum angle measurable by our array. We found that echolocating bats use a “saccade and fixate” strategy similar to vision. Through the use of scanning movements, bats are capable of finding and exploring targets in a wide search cone centered along flight direction. Text Pipistrellus pipistrellus PubMed Central (PMC) PLoS ONE 8 4 e60752 |
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Research Article |
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Research Article Seibert, Anna-Maria Koblitz, Jens C. Denzinger, Annette Schnitzler, Hans-Ulrich Scanning Behavior in Echolocating Common Pipistrelle Bats (Pipistrellus pipistrellus) |
topic_facet |
Research Article |
description |
Echolocating bats construct an auditory world sequentially by analyzing successive pulse-echo pairs. Many other mammals rely upon a visual world, acquired by sequential foveal fixations connected by visual gaze saccades. We investigated the scanning behavior of bats and compared it to visual scanning. We assumed that each pulse-echo pair evaluation corresponds to a foveal fixation and that sonar beam movements between pulses can be seen as acoustic gaze saccades. We used a two-dimensional 16 microphone array to determine the sonar beam direction of succeeding pulses and to characterize the three dimensional scanning behavior in the common pipistrelle bat (Pipistrellus pipistrellus) flying in the field. We also used variations of signal amplitude of single microphone recordings as indicator for scanning behavior in open space. We analyzed 33 flight sequences containing more than 700 echolocation calls to determine bat positions, source levels, and beam aiming. When searching for prey and orienting in space, bats moved their sonar beam in all directions, often alternately back and forth. They also produced sequences with irregular or no scanning movements. When approaching the array, the scanning movements were much smaller and the beam was moved over the array in small steps. Differences in the scanning pattern at various recording sites indicated that the scanning behavior depended on the echolocation task that was being performed. The scanning angles varied over a wide range and were often larger than the maximum angle measurable by our array. We found that echolocating bats use a “saccade and fixate” strategy similar to vision. Through the use of scanning movements, bats are capable of finding and exploring targets in a wide search cone centered along flight direction. |
format |
Text |
author |
Seibert, Anna-Maria Koblitz, Jens C. Denzinger, Annette Schnitzler, Hans-Ulrich |
author_facet |
Seibert, Anna-Maria Koblitz, Jens C. Denzinger, Annette Schnitzler, Hans-Ulrich |
author_sort |
Seibert, Anna-Maria |
title |
Scanning Behavior in Echolocating Common Pipistrelle Bats (Pipistrellus pipistrellus) |
title_short |
Scanning Behavior in Echolocating Common Pipistrelle Bats (Pipistrellus pipistrellus) |
title_full |
Scanning Behavior in Echolocating Common Pipistrelle Bats (Pipistrellus pipistrellus) |
title_fullStr |
Scanning Behavior in Echolocating Common Pipistrelle Bats (Pipistrellus pipistrellus) |
title_full_unstemmed |
Scanning Behavior in Echolocating Common Pipistrelle Bats (Pipistrellus pipistrellus) |
title_sort |
scanning behavior in echolocating common pipistrelle bats (pipistrellus pipistrellus) |
publisher |
Public Library of Science |
publishDate |
2013 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3620330 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23580164 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0060752 |
genre |
Pipistrellus pipistrellus |
genre_facet |
Pipistrellus pipistrellus |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3620330 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23580164 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0060752 |
op_rights |
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0060752 |
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PLoS ONE |
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8 |
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4 |
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e60752 |
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