Echolocating toothed whales use ultra-fast echo-kinetic responses to track evasive prey
Visual predators rely on fast-acting optokinetic responses to track and capture agile prey. Most toothed whales, however, rely on echolocation for hunting and have converged on biosonar clicking rates reaching 500/s during prey pursuits. If echoes are processed on a click-by-click basis, as assumed,...
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Online Access: | http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8547948/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34696826 https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.68825 |
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:8547948 2023-05-15T18:33:28+02:00 Echolocating toothed whales use ultra-fast echo-kinetic responses to track evasive prey Vance, Heather Madsen, Peter T Aguilar de Soto, Natacha Wisniewska, Danuta Maria Ladegaard, Michael Hooker, Sascha Johnson, Mark 2021-10-26 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8547948/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34696826 https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.68825 en eng eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8547948/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34696826 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.68825 © 2021, Vance et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited. CC-BY eLife Ecology Text 2021 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.68825 2021-10-31T01:00:14Z Visual predators rely on fast-acting optokinetic responses to track and capture agile prey. Most toothed whales, however, rely on echolocation for hunting and have converged on biosonar clicking rates reaching 500/s during prey pursuits. If echoes are processed on a click-by-click basis, as assumed, neural responses 100× faster than those in vision are required to keep pace with this information flow. Using high-resolution biologging of wild predator-prey interactions, we show that toothed whales adjust clicking rates to track prey movement within 50–200 ms of prey escape responses. Hypothesising that these stereotyped biosonar adjustments are elicited by sudden prey accelerations, we measured echo-kinetic responses from trained harbour porpoises to a moving target and found similar latencies. High biosonar sampling rates are, therefore, not supported by extreme speeds of neural processing and muscular responses. Instead, the neurokinetic response times in echolocation are similar to those of tracking responses in vision, suggesting a common neural underpinning. Text toothed whales PubMed Central (PMC) eLife 10 |
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topic |
Ecology |
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Ecology Vance, Heather Madsen, Peter T Aguilar de Soto, Natacha Wisniewska, Danuta Maria Ladegaard, Michael Hooker, Sascha Johnson, Mark Echolocating toothed whales use ultra-fast echo-kinetic responses to track evasive prey |
topic_facet |
Ecology |
description |
Visual predators rely on fast-acting optokinetic responses to track and capture agile prey. Most toothed whales, however, rely on echolocation for hunting and have converged on biosonar clicking rates reaching 500/s during prey pursuits. If echoes are processed on a click-by-click basis, as assumed, neural responses 100× faster than those in vision are required to keep pace with this information flow. Using high-resolution biologging of wild predator-prey interactions, we show that toothed whales adjust clicking rates to track prey movement within 50–200 ms of prey escape responses. Hypothesising that these stereotyped biosonar adjustments are elicited by sudden prey accelerations, we measured echo-kinetic responses from trained harbour porpoises to a moving target and found similar latencies. High biosonar sampling rates are, therefore, not supported by extreme speeds of neural processing and muscular responses. Instead, the neurokinetic response times in echolocation are similar to those of tracking responses in vision, suggesting a common neural underpinning. |
format |
Text |
author |
Vance, Heather Madsen, Peter T Aguilar de Soto, Natacha Wisniewska, Danuta Maria Ladegaard, Michael Hooker, Sascha Johnson, Mark |
author_facet |
Vance, Heather Madsen, Peter T Aguilar de Soto, Natacha Wisniewska, Danuta Maria Ladegaard, Michael Hooker, Sascha Johnson, Mark |
author_sort |
Vance, Heather |
title |
Echolocating toothed whales use ultra-fast echo-kinetic responses to track evasive prey |
title_short |
Echolocating toothed whales use ultra-fast echo-kinetic responses to track evasive prey |
title_full |
Echolocating toothed whales use ultra-fast echo-kinetic responses to track evasive prey |
title_fullStr |
Echolocating toothed whales use ultra-fast echo-kinetic responses to track evasive prey |
title_full_unstemmed |
Echolocating toothed whales use ultra-fast echo-kinetic responses to track evasive prey |
title_sort |
echolocating toothed whales use ultra-fast echo-kinetic responses to track evasive prey |
publisher |
eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd |
publishDate |
2021 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8547948/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34696826 https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.68825 |
genre |
toothed whales |
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toothed whales |
op_source |
eLife |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8547948/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34696826 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.68825 |
op_rights |
© 2021, Vance et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited. |
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CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.68825 |
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eLife |
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10 |
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1766218072473993216 |