Adaptive temporal patterns of echolocation and flight behaviors used to fly through varied-sized windows by 2 species of high duty cycle bats.

As actively sensing animals guided by acoustic information, echolocating bats must adapt their vocal-motor behavior to various environments and behavioral tasks. Here, we investigated how the temporal patterns of echolocation and flight behavior were adjusted in 2 species of bats with a high duty cycle (HDC) call structure, and , when they flew along a straight corridor and then passed through windows of 3 different sizes. We also tested whether divergence existed in the adaptations of the 2 species. Both and increased their call rates by shortening the pulse duration and inter-pulse interval for more rapid spatial sampling of the environment when flying through smaller windows. Bats produced more sonar sound groups (SSGs) while maintaining a stable proportion of calls that made up SSGs during approaches to smaller windows. The 2 species showed divergent adjustment in flight behavior across 3 different window sizes. reduced its flight speed to pass through smaller windows while increased its flight speed. Our results suggest that these 2 species of HDC bats adopt similar acoustic timing patterns for different tasks although they performed different flight behaviors.