Migratory bats are sensitive to magnetic inclination changes during the compass calibration period

Author:

Schneider William T.1,Holland Richard A.1ORCID,Keišs Oskars2,Lindecke Oliver13ORCID

Affiliation:

1. School of Natural Sciences, Bangor University, Bangor, Gwynedd LL57 2UW, UK

2. Laboratory of Ornithology, Institute of Biology, University of Latvia, Rīga LV–1004, Latvia

3. Institute of Biology and Environmental Sciences, Carl-von-Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Oldenburg 26129, Germany

Abstract

The Earth's magnetic field is used as a navigational cue by many animals. For mammals, however, there are few data to show that navigation ability relies on sensing the natural magnetic field. In night-time migrating bats, experiments demonstrating a role for the solar azimuth at sunset in the calibration of the orientation system suggest that the magnetic field is a candidate for their compass. Here, we investigated how an altered magnetic field at sunset changes the nocturnal orientation of the bat Pipistrellus pygmaeus . We exposed bats to either the natural magnetic field, a horizontally shifted field (120°), or the same shifted field combined with a reversal of the natural value of inclination (70° to −70°). We later released the bats and found that the take-off orientation differed among all treatments. Bats that were exposed to the 120° shift were unimodally oriented northwards in contrast to controls which exhibited a bimodal north–south distribution. Surprisingly, the orientation of bats exposed to both a 120° shift and reverse inclination was indistinguishable from a uniform distribution. These results suggest that these migratory bats calibrate the magnetic field at sunset, and for the first time, they show that bats are sensitive to the angle of magnetic inclination.

Funder

HORIZON EUROPE Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions

Leverhulme Trust

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

Publisher

The Royal Society

Subject

General Agricultural and Biological Sciences,Agricultural and Biological Sciences (miscellaneous)

Reference22 articles.

1. Perception in the Lower Animals

2. The Visual Problems of Nocturnal Migration

3. Seasonal migrations of north-eastern populations of Nathusius’ bat Pipistrellus nathusii (Chiroptera);Pētersons G;Myotis,2004

4. Hutterer R, Ivanova T, Meyer-Cords C, Rodrigues L. 2005 Bat migrations in Europe a review of banding data and literature. Bonn, Germany: Federal Agency for Nature Conservation.

5. Estimation of the acoustic range of bat echolocation for extended targets

Cited by 2 articles. 订阅此论文施引文献 订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献

同舟云学术

1.学者识别学者识别

2.学术分析学术分析

3.人才评估人才评估

"同舟云学术"是以全球学者为主线,采集、加工和组织学术论文而形成的新型学术文献查询和分析系统,可以对全球学者进行文献检索和人才价值评估。用户可以通过关注某些学科领域的顶尖人物而持续追踪该领域的学科进展和研究前沿。经过近期的数据扩容,当前同舟云学术共收录了国内外主流学术期刊6万余种,收集的期刊论文及会议论文总量共计约1.5亿篇,并以每天添加12000余篇中外论文的速度递增。我们也可以为用户提供个性化、定制化的学者数据。欢迎来电咨询!咨询电话:010-8811{复制后删除}0370

www.globalauthorid.com

TOP

Copyright © 2019-2024 北京同舟云网络信息技术有限公司
京公网安备11010802033243号  京ICP备18003416号-3