Page Rachel A, Ryan Michael J
Section of Integrative Biology, University Station C0930, University of Texas at Austin, 78712, USA.
Curr Biol. 2006 Jun 20;16(12):1201-5. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2006.04.038.
The fringe-lipped bat, Trachops cirrhosus, uses prey-emitted acoustic cues (frog calls) to assess prey palatability . Previous experiments show that wild T. cirrhosus brought into the laboratory are flexible in their ability to reverse the associations they form between prey cues and prey quality . Here we asked how this flexibility can be achieved in nature. We quantified the rate at which bats learned to associate the calls of a poisonous toad species with palatable prey by placing bats in three groups: (a) social learning, in which a bat inexperienced with the novel association was allowed to observe an experienced bat; (b) social facilitation, in which two inexperienced bats were presented with the experimental task together; and (c) trial-and-error, in which a single inexperienced bat was presented with the experimental task alone. In the social-learning group, bats rapidly acquired the novel association in an average of 5.3 trials. In the social-facilitation and trial-and-error groups, most bats did not approach the call of the poisonous species after 100 trials. Thus, once acquired, novel associations between prey cue and prey quality could spread rapidly through the bat population by cultural transmission. This is the first case to document predator social learning of an acoustic prey cue.
皱唇蝠（Trachops cirrhosus）利用猎物发出的声学线索（蛙鸣声）来评估猎物的适口性。先前的实验表明，被带入实验室的野生皱唇蝠在逆转它们在猎物线索和猎物质量之间形成的关联方面具有灵活性。在这里，我们探讨了这种灵活性在自然环境中是如何实现的。我们通过将蝙蝠分为三组来量化蝙蝠学会将一种有毒蟾蜍物种的叫声与适口猎物联系起来的速率：（a）社会学习组，让一只对新关联不熟悉的蝙蝠观察一只经验丰富的蝙蝠；（b）社会促进组，让两只不熟悉的蝙蝠一起完成实验任务；（c）试错组，让一只不熟悉的蝙蝠单独完成实验任务。在社会学习组中，蝙蝠平均在5.3次试验中迅速获得了新的关联。在社会促进组和试错组中，大多数蝙蝠在100次试验后都没有接近有毒物种的叫声。因此，一旦获得，猎物线索和猎物质量之间的新关联可以通过文化传播在蝙蝠种群中迅速传播。这是记录捕食者对声学猎物线索进行社会学习的首个案例。
