Researchers find bats use curled leaves for sound amplification
Researchers find bats use curled leaves for sound amplification
6 hours ago by Bob Yirka
(Phys.org) —A pair of researchers, one from Universidad de Costa Rica, the other North Dakota State University has found that a type of bat that hides from predators inside a curled leaf plants, gains acoustic advantages from doing so. In their paper published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, Gloriana Chaverri and Erin Gillam describe recording experiments they conducted with the types of plants the bats hide in and found that the plant served as both megaphone and ear horn.
Prior experiments by researchers studying Spix's disc-winged bats (Thyroptera tricolor) have found that the tiny creatures oftentimes have difficulty differentiating calls from family members and others in their group. This is important because the bats are social—they form clans that stay together for years. Intrigued, Chaverri and Gillam wondered if the sound problems might be due to the environment in which the bats live when they are not flying—in the curled leaves of Calathea and Heliconia type plants that grow outside their caves (in South America). To find out, they collected several plant specimens and brought them into their lab. There they affixed tiny microphones and speakers that played bat calls in and around the plants to study their acoustic properties. In doing so, they discovered that the curled plants caused several changes to the sound around them.
Most impressively, they found that sound emitted outside of the plant becomes condensed as it makes its way inside the funnel shaped leaves—by the time it reaches the bottom the sound on average was increased by ten decibels. This means that those hiding inside the leaves can hear calls from their family members who are much farther away than if they were not in the leaf. The researchers found that the leaves also worked as a megaphone, increasing the volume of sounds emitted from inside the leaves by 1 to 2 decibels (by focusing the sound as it leaves). They also found that because different sound frequencies were impacted in different ways by the shape of the leaves, bat calls heard inside would be nearly impossible for the hiding bats to distinguish between family, friend or stranger.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-10-amplification.html#jCp
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