Strategic angles help bats hunt stationary bugs on leaves
从战略角度帮助蝙蝠捕食树叶上的虫子。
Bats are known for using high- frequency acoustic signals to deftly snatch flying insects from the air at night, even amid dense forests. But more than 40 percent of insectivorous bat species hunt by plucking prey resting on leaves or other surfaces. Because the sound waves bats emit reflect off vegetation at all angles, the returning jumble of echoes should render a leaf-bound insect virtually imperceptible—so scientists have long suspected that bats use clues from vision, smells or prey-generated sounds to help find a motionless meal.
蝙蝠以在夜晚从空中使用高频声信号灵活的捕捉昆虫而闻名,甚至在茂密的森林中也可以如此。因为蝙蝠发射的声波可以从植被的各个角度上被反射回来,所以超过40%的食虫蝙蝠靠捕获树叶上或其他静止的表面上的昆虫为生。而呆在树叶上的昆虫根本无法感觉到杂乱的声波,所以科学家们一直怀疑蝙蝠是因为蝙蝠从视觉,气味和声波去帮助他去寻找到一个静止的食物。
Now, however, biologists Inga Geipel of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Ralph Simon of Free University Amsterdam and their colleagues have shown how some bats detect a still and silent insect on a leaf using echolocation alone. By approaching the target along a specific trajectory, the common bigeared bat Micronycteris microtis treats the leaf as an acoustic mirror to reflect unwanted echoes away from its angle of attack. This makes the insect’s signal stand out, according to a study published in August in Current Biology.
根据今年8月发表在《当代生物学》(Current Biology)杂志上的一项研究,Smithsonian Tropical 研究所的生物学家Inga,Amsterdam自由大学的Ralph Simon和他们的同事解释了一些蝙蝠是如何仅使用回声定位来确定一片树叶上的猎物的。通过一个特殊的轨道来接近目标,常见的大耳蝙蝠-美洲小耳蝠属使用树叶作为声波反射区,从攻击角度去反射不必要的声波,使昆虫目标的声波信号更加明显,
“To the bat’s ears, echoes from the prey are enhanced, while those coming from the leaves are effectively reduced,” says John Ratcliffe, an animal biologist from the University of Toronto, who was not involved in the new work.
Toronto大学的动物生物学家John Ratcliffe说道:“蝙蝠的耳朵有效的增强了猎物的回声,提高了蝙蝠的捕食效率,减少了叶子声波对捕食的影响”。但他没有参与这项工作的研究。
The researchers lined a room with microphones and monitored how sound waves generated by a synthetic batlike sonar reflected off a leaf. They found that the waves bounced off the leaf itself in a direction away from the source. But when an insect was placed on the leaf, pulses coming in at angles around 60 degrees from vertical reflected back to the sonar’s source. Next the researchers filmed four wild bats nabbing dragonflies perched on leaves. “The bats approached exactly from the expected angles,” Simon explains. Outside of that range of angles, the target became much harder to detect.
研究人员在房间里使用了整排的麦克风去监控观察类似蝙蝠的合成声呐反射树叶所产生的声波,他们发现了声波从树叶本身向远离声波来源的地方反射。但是当有昆虫在树叶上时,脉冲大约以60度的方向垂直反射回声呐源。然后研究人员拍摄了4只野生蝙蝠在树叶上捕食蜻蜓的画面,Simon说道:“这些蝙蝠可以精准的从预期的角度接近目标”。而超出了角度范围之外的猎物,探测起来就会变得更加困难。
This is not the first time scientists have observed bats bouncing waves off a surface in this way; individuals feeding at lakes and ponds use a similar process to help make floating prey stand out. But that tactic relies on the water’s large, smooth surface—and bats do not have to maneuver as delicately to approach from the correct angle. “It’s exciting to learn that the same process can be exploited in a very different environment,” says neuroscientist Michaela Warnecke of the University of Wisconsin Madison, who has investigated echo location but was not involved in the study.
这并不是科学家们首次观察到蝙蝠以这种方式从表面反射声波,在湖泊和池塘觅食的蝙蝠使用这种方式使暴露的猎物更容易被发现。但是这种方式受限于水域面积,表面光滑程度,和蝙蝠是否以一个正确的角度去完美的接近目标。Madison-Wisconsin 大学的神经系统科学家Michaela Warnecke说道:“让我们兴奋的是,同样的一种流程方式可以利用在不同的环境中”。--他研究了回声定位,但没有继续深入。
Whether M. microtis’s hunting strategy is unique among bat species remains to be seen, Ratcliffe says. But this work helps to reveal the bat’s acoustic world, which could lead to new applications, including improved bat-inspired sonar systems, according to the study’s researchers.
研究员 Ratcliffe 说道:无论M. microtis’s的狩猎策略在蝙蝠中是否是唯一的还需要验证。但是这个工作帮助我们揭露了蝙蝠声音世界的更多信息,可以引导我们向这种场景的新的用途上发展,包括改进蝙蝠声呐系统。
—Rachel Berkowitz