Taxon:
Phyllostomus hastatus

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Scientific Name
Phyllostomus hastatus
Common Name
greater spear-nosed bat
Taxa Group
mammal
Environment
terrestrial
Move Mode
fly

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2023 - 20243
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  • No Thumbnail Available
    Data package
    Data from: Greater spear nosed bats commute long distances alone, rest together, but forage apart
    (2023-08-22) O'Mara, M. Teague; Dechmann, Dina K.N.
    Animals frequently forage in groups on ephemeral resources to profit from social information and increased efficiency. Greater spear-nosed bats, Phyllostomus hastatus, develop group-specific social calls, which are hypothesized to coordinate social foraging to feed on patchily distributed balsa flowers. To test this, we tagged all members of three social groups of P. hastatus on Isla Colo n, Panama , using high-frequency GPS during a season when balsa had begun to flower. We found that bats commuted 20-30 km to foraging sites, more than double the distance reported previously. In contrast to our expectations, we found that tagged individuals did not commute together, but did join group members in small foraging patches with high densities of flowering balsas on the mainland. We hypothesized that close proximity to group members would increase foraging efficiency if social foraging were used to find flower clusters, but distance between tagged individuals did not predict foraging efficiency or energy expenditure. However, decreased distance among tagged bats positively influenced the time spent outside roosting caves and increased the duration and synchrony of resting. These results suggest that social proximity appears to be more important during resting and that factors other than increased feeding efficiency may structure social relationships of group members while foraging. It appears that, depending on the local resource landscape, these bats have an excellent map even of distant resources and may use social information only for current patch discovery. They then may no longer rely on social information during daily foraging.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Data package
    Data from: Consistent long-distance foraging flights across years and seasons at colony level in a neotropical bat [2023]
    (2024-11-27) Bayer, Travis D.; Barría, Leslye M.; Gómez, Luisa F.; Lee, James P.; Aguilar, Graciela; O'Mara, M. Teague
    All foraging animals face a trade-off: how much time should they invest in exploitation of known resources versus exploration to discover new resources? For group-living central place foragers, this balance is challenging. Due to the nature of their movement patterns, exploration and exploitation are often mutually exclusive, while the availability of social information may discourage individuals from exploring. To examine these trade-offs, we GPS-tracked groups of greater spear-nosed bats (Phyllostomus hastatus) from three colonies on Isla Colón, Panamá. During the dry season, when these omnivores forage on the nectar of unpredictable balsa flowers, bats consistently travelled long distances to remote, colony- specific foraging areas, bypassing flowering trees closer to their roosts. They continued using these areas in the wet season, when feeding on a diverse, presumably ubiquitous diet, but also visited other, similarly distant foraging areas. Foraging areas were shared within but not always between colonies. Our longitudinal dataset suggests that bats from each colony invest in long-distance commutes to socially learned shared foraging areas, bypassing other available food patches. Rather than exploring nearby resources, these bats exploit colony-specific foraging locations that appear to be culturally transmitted. These results give insight into how social animals might diverge from optimal foraging.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Data package
    Data from: Consistent long-distance foraging flights across years and seasons at colony level in a neotropical bat [2021-2022]
    (2024-11-27) Calderón-Capote, María C.; van Toor, Mariëlle L.; O'Mara, M. Teague; Bayer, Travis D.; Crofoot, Margaret C.; Dechmann, Dina K.N.
    All foraging animals face a trade-off: how much time should they invest in exploitation of known resources versus exploration to discover new resources? For group-living central place foragers, this balance is challenging. Due to the nature of their movement patterns, exploration and exploitation are often mutually exclusive, while the availability of social information may discourage individuals from exploring. To examine these trade-offs, we GPS-tracked groups of greater spear-nosed bats (Phyllostomus hastatus) from three colonies on Isla Colón, Panamá. During the dry season, when these omnivores forage on the nectar of unpredictable balsa flowers, bats consistently travelled long distances to remote, colony- specific foraging areas, bypassing flowering trees closer to their roosts. They continued using these areas in the wet season, when feeding on a diverse, presumably ubiquitous diet, but also visited other, similarly distant foraging areas. Foraging areas were shared within but not always between colonies. Our longitudinal dataset suggests that bats from each colony invest in long-distance commutes to socially learned shared foraging areas, bypassing other available food patches. Rather than exploring nearby resources, these bats exploit colony-specific foraging locations that appear to be culturally transmitted. These results give insight into how social animals might diverge from optimal foraging.