Banca de QUALIFICAÇÃO: ANDREA CECÍLIA SICOTTI MAAS

Uma banca de QUALIFICAÇÃO de DOUTORADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
DISCENTE : ANDREA CECÍLIA SICOTTI MAAS
DATA : 31/07/2018
HORA: 14:00
LOCAL: Sala 35 do ICBS
TÍTULO:

Acoustic structure of distress calls in bats and their relation to foraging behavior

PALAVRAS-CHAVES:

Bioacoustics, social communication, playback, predator, foraging behavior, anti-predator behavior

PÁGINAS: 84
GRANDE ÁREA: Ciências Biológicas
ÁREA: Zoologia
SUBÁREA: Comportamento Animal
RESUMO:

Vocalizations are employed during navigation and food aquisition (e.g. echolocation
system), but also play an important role in social interactions. Within this latter aspect
there are the distress calls, which are audible and emitted in situations of eminent
predation. However, unlike the echolocation calls, or even communication between
relatives and foraging groups, distress calls have been poorly studied and their
emission may be associated with different defense strategies, including direct predator
aggression and the attraction of others bats, which would produce a mobbing
behaviour around the predator, eventually facilitating the escape of the bat in danger.
Considering that different foraging strategies may imply a greater or lesser risk of
predation, the present work aims to analyze if these strategies are related to the
structure and the use of the distress calls. Due to the diversity of diets and foraging
strategies, as well as the ease of sampling, phyllostomids are a good model to
investigate this relationship, and populations of different species have been studied for
this purpose in five localities, four in the Atlantic Forest and one in the Caatinga. These
bats were captured in mist nets and recordings of their calls were conducted with a
Song Meter SM4BAT FS Full-Spectrum Ultrasonic Recorder and Wildlife Acoustics®
Omnidirectional Ultrasonic Microphone. To date, 12 species have been sampled in
nine genera and five subfamilies. In the first chapter of the thesis, the main objective is
to obtain these metrics (duration, minimum and maximum frequencies, maximum
energy frequency and harshness) and to investigate the main parameters of the
distress calls of most phyllostomids. Tendencies of variation in the data, which will be
done through phylogenetic principal component analysis (PCA). If there are different
types of calls for aggression against the predator and to promote mobbing behaviour,
these patterns may be relevant in this analysis, separating bats that forage into sparse
resources (eg, Carollia) and attract few predators from those which use explosive
resources (eg, Artibeus), where further predation is expected. In the second chapter,
the approach is to investigate the behavior of the use of distress calls on bats with
different foraging strategies (Carollia perspicillata, Artibeus lituratus and Sturnira lilium).
It is expected that not only the structure of the call, but its use, is also related to
foraging behavior, with bats more prone to predation by issuing calls for distress more
often than those less prone to predation. In this case, bats captured in mist networks
were observed for the emission of the call at the time of their removal from the net.
Additionally, in one of the studied areas, playback experiments were conducted, with
reproduction of distress calls of the three species. Here the expectation was that the
so-called foraging species in explosive resources would be more effective in triggering
mobbing behaviour than those using less abundant resources. Preliminary results,
obtained from 497 catches of C. perspicillata, A. lituratus and S. lilium, confirmed our
prediction that the species that uses explosive resources (A. lituratus) uses distress
calls more frequently, but there was no difference between S. lilium and C.
perspicillata. With respect to the playback experiments, only A. lituratus resulted in
mobbing behaviour, which suggests that the calls of this species have particular
characteristics favoring this type of response in conspecifics and even bats of other
species and genera. These results confirm our hypothesis that the distress calls
evolved under the influence of foraging behavior, (assuming in groups with higher risk
of predation, the aggregation of individuals to the food source) the function of
generating mobbing behaviour. It is expected that analyzes of the structure of distress

calls, still in progress, will give evidence of this differentiation, showing the elements
that modify a call only with the aim of repelling the predator, from one that also results
in mobbing behaviour.

MEMBROS DA BANCA:
Interno - 012.990.857-68 - ADRIANO LUCIO PERACCHI - UFRRJ
Externo ao Programa - 1545699 - CARLOS EDUARDO LUSTOSA ESBERARD
Externo à Instituição - FLÁVIA GUIMARÃES CHAVES - UERJ
Presidente - 387200 - FRANCISCO GERSON ARAUJO