Meeting Abstract

P2.162  Tuesday, Jan. 5  Hovering and hoovering: tongue and wing movements in nectar-feeding bats Glossophaga soricina HARPER, C.J.*; AZIZI, E.; NOWROOZI, B.N.; SULLIVAN, A.C.; SWARTZ, S.M.; Brown University; Brown University; Brown University; Brown University; Brown University caroline_harper@brown.edu

During feeding, nectar-feeding bats hover in front of a flower and use their long tongues to gather nectar. The muscles used to power the upstroke and the downstroke of the wing act on specific regions of the thorax. The tongue retractor muscle, the sternoglossus muscle, also originates on the thorax. Specifically, the sternoglossus muscle arises from the xiphoid process of the sternum and inserts into the free portion of the tongue. During hovering, the actions of the flight muscles likely change the shape of the thorax, which may constrain tongue retraction. If the actions of the flight muscles constrain tongue retraction, we would expect to see a distinct temporal relationship between the movements of the wing and the movements of the tongue. Nectar-feeding bats, Glossophaga soricina, were trained to feed from a small feeder and high-speed videography was used to capture tongue protrusion and retraction across multiple wingbeat cycles. The kinematic data showed that tongue elongation and retraction occurred during various phases of the wingbeat cycle with no distinct pattern. Therefore, despite their anatomical connection to the thorax, the movement of the tongue appears to not be constrained by the actions of the flight muscles. This finding suggests that movements associated with feeding and flight are not tightly coupled in nectar-feeding bats.