In: Biology
You have discovered a new species of vampire bat in South America (which you have named Desmodus knoxensis!), and you wish to answer several questions about its behavior.
Given the fact that D. knoxensis females and juveniles roost together in hollow trees like other vampire bats, you hypothesize that vampire bat roosts act as information centers, a hypothesis that requires FOUR pieces of evidence (list them below). Based on your knowledge of a related vampire bat species (D. rotundus), what evidence is ALREADY AVAILABLE to support this hypothesis or what evidence would STILL BE REQUIRED (give details for both)? (12 points)
Evidence required for Information Center Hypothesis / Available or not? (Explain below each required piece of evidence: whether it is available and what observations support this hypothesis in D. rotundus. If not available state what observations would be needed to support the required evidence.):
It has been observed that these bat species roost can serve as centres for information exchange about novel and familiar ephemeral foods without requiring con specific recruitment to these resources. Experiment result on these bat support the hypothesis that the individuals learn about novel foods through roosting interactions and this indicates individual bats can act as both centres and receivers of information.
Plants produced olfaction cues can themselves serves as recruiting agents for bars. Bats that experienced novel food cues only on the breath or body of a roost might use these odour plumes to find sources of food. Bats are extremely sensitive towards smell of fruits. They are proficient at discriminating between similar odours. Laboratory experiments have shown that, in this species olfaction is more important than either vision or echolocation for the detection and gross location of food.
Social transmission of information about familiar resources may be beneficial to individuals by reducing costs associated with home-range monitoring. If cues gleamed from roost , makes can inform a bat that fruit is available then the bat May begin to search for the relevant odour plume or is neglected patches, that until recently had contained as yet unpalatable resources showed experimentally that these bars are sensitive to spatio-tempered fluctuations in food availa8and suggested the use of spatial memo6to locate ephemeral resources.
Desmodus rotundus bar species have developed a specialized system using infrared sensitive receptors on their nose-leaf to prey on warm blooded vertebrates. Trigeminal nerve fibres that innervate is infrared sensitive receptors may be involved in detection of infrared thermal radiation emitted by their prey. This may aid bars in locating their prey.