Aizpurua Ostaizka, Alberdi Antton, Aihartza Joxerra, Garin Inazio
Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen, Øster Voldgade, Copenhagen K, Denmark.
Department of Zoology and Animal Cell Biology, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of The Basque Country, UPV/EHU, Sarriena z/g, Leioa, The Basque Country, Spain.
PLoS One. 2016 Dec 14;11(12):e0167164. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0167164. eCollection 2016.
Behavioral plasticity is a key feature allowing animals to broaden their dietary niche when novel food resources become available, and long-fingered bats provide an appropriate model system to study the underpinnings of behavioral plasticity, since although generally being an insectivorous species, some individuals have been reported to catch fish. Aiming to get insight into the origin of fishing behavior in long-fingered bats, we studied in the field the differences in sensorial and mechanical reactions to insect-like (stationary) and fish-like (temporary) prey stimuli between well-known piscivorous and strictly insectivorous individuals. Both piscivorous and insectivorous individuals exhibited a qualitatively similar reaction to temporary target stimuli (longer and deeper dips and terminal echolocation phase skewed towards buzz I compared to stationary stimuli). Nevertheless, the quantitative differences observed in the sensorial and mechanical features (the intensity of the shift was significantly greater in piscivorous than in insectivorous individuals) show that piscivorous individuals have honed their capture technique likely enhancing the fishing success. Thus, our results suggest that the fishing technique was developed from a primary reaction shared by all long-fingered bats. All individuals seem to be mechanically and sensorially adapted to detect and capture fish, although under appropriate environmental conditions, they would further improve their technique by experience and/or social learning.
行为可塑性是一项关键特征，它使动物在有新的食物资源可用时能够拓宽其饮食生态位，而长指蝙蝠提供了一个合适的模型系统来研究行为可塑性的基础，因为尽管长指蝙蝠通常是食虫物种，但已有报道称一些个体能捕鱼。为了深入了解长指蝙蝠捕鱼行为的起源，我们在野外研究了著名的食鱼个体和严格食虫个体对类似昆虫（静止）和类似鱼类（临时）猎物刺激的感官和机械反应差异。食鱼个体和食虫个体对临时目标刺激都表现出定性相似的反应（与静止刺激相比，俯冲时间更长、更深，且终端回声定位阶段偏向嗡嗡声I）。然而，在感官和机械特征上观察到的定量差异（食鱼个体中这种变化的强度明显大于食虫个体）表明，食鱼个体已经磨练了它们的捕捉技巧，这可能提高了捕鱼成功率。因此，我们的结果表明，捕鱼技巧是从所有长指蝙蝠共有的初级反应发展而来的。所有个体似乎在机械和感官上都适应了检测和捕捉鱼类，尽管在适当的环境条件下，它们会通过经验和/或社会学习进一步改进自己的技巧。
