Meeting Abstract
Prey capture for aerially hawking bats in or near dense vegetation is a difficult task. On the other hand, such environments attract abundant insect prey. To explore this resource, bats need to overcome sensory difficulties like avoid call masking and flight challenges by being able to fly slow, hover and turn aggressively. In Southeastern Europe all five European horseshoe bat species occur sympatrically – they forage within or close to different kinds of vegetation. Field studies indicate that the species differ in diet and hunting strategies to some extent, but they also show considerable overlap. How can several of these species share the same habitats and to what extent does niche partitioning occur? We set out to understand by testing the flight maneuverability in the three European Rhinolophid species (R. euryale, R. ferrumequinum and R. mehelyi) that best represented the range of body sizes. Minimum turning radius has been used previously as a measure of flight maneuverability. Therefore we tested the maneuverability of the 3 species by measuring their minimal turning radius along with other flight parameters during turning and obstacle avoidance under controlled laboratory conditions. We employed 3D, high-speed, motion-capture with synchronized sound-recording to study the evasive maneuvers of the bats. Three-dimensional reconstructions of the bats’ flight trajectories indicate that there are no significant differences between the maneuverability of the three species as measured by their minimum turning radius. Other behavioral or ecological factors likely contribute to the realized niche partitioning presumed for these closely related and ecologically similar species.
