Bats in Transition

Bats are a highly interesting taxon for animal communication research. Echolocation, requiring precise and rapid auditory - vocal motor integration, is a preadaptation for complex vocal communication. Moreover, bats have a diverse set of social systems, and phylogenetically controlled analyses suggest a positive feedback loop between social and vocal complexity. In my talk, I highlight the latest results from our team on bat vocal communication, with a special focus on the information content encoded in bat vocalizations and the causes and consequences of vocal production learning. Vocalizing bats reveal a wealth of personal information such as individual ID, motivational status, and regional origin, and playback experiments demonstrate that this information is functionally relevant for conspecifics. In addition, the vocal ontogeny of bats has some interesting parallels to that of other sophisticated communicators, including humans.