Great talk yesterday by Inga Geipel of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute Panama titled: “Bats: Finding prey through sound – two ends of an acoustic spectrum”.
On one end of the spectrum: Trachops cirrhosus, the fringe-lipped bat, a passive listener which waits for its frog prey to call and make itself known.
On the other end of the spectrum: Micronycteris microtis, an active listener which uses echolocation to seek out it’s dragonfly prey in the jungle understory.
Inga and her collaborators at STRI utilize an impressive array of instrumentation to document how each of these bats make a living. It’s always fascinating to see the results of their latest study and hearing about what they are dreaming up next!