Featured Post

THIS IS WHAT I DO

Barbed wire | Rescue | THIS IS WHAT I DO checking barbed wire in my own time. volunteer.

Traffic noise is bad for foraging bats

Noise "degrades" bat habitat for 50-60m either side of a busy highway


By Victoria Gill - Science and nature reporter

Traffic noise reduces bats' ability to locate their prey, say scientists.

Researchers in Germany found that road noise affected the bats' ability to listen for the "rustling sound" of the beetles and spiders they feed on.

This is the first study to examine the impact of traffic on predators that listen for their prey.

The researchers report in the Royal Society journal Proceedings B that the same effect could be true for other "acoustic predators", including owls.

"We were astonished by how well they coped with the noise, but their efficiency was greatly reduced" - Bjorn Siemers, Max Planck Institute for Ornithology
Greater mouse-eared bats eat large, ground-running creatures, such as carabid beetles, hunting spiders and centipedes.

With their remarkably sensitive hearing, the bats detect and track down their prey by listening for the faint rustling sounds they produce when walking.

The bats are protected under the European Habitats directive, so the scientists' aim was to measure how any planned highways might affect their habitat.

To do this, they set up a flight test.

"We attempted to simulate the bats' foraging behaviour in our flight room," explained lead researcher Bjorn Siemers from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen.

In the wild, the bats fly about one meter above ground listening for rustling sounds.
see link for video.
The flight experiment simulated the foraging behavior of bats

"We had an array of 64 plates [on the floor of the flight room] each containing a speaker through which we could play this rustling sound," explained Dr Siemers.

When a bat landed on the right plate - the one from which the sound was being played - there would be a food reward waiting for it.

"On average it took five seconds for the bats to find the right plate," said Dr Siemers.

But when the team introduced traffic noise - via more loud speakers - into the flight room, the bats' performance declined.

Under the "strongest noise profiles" - which mimicked the sound of a busy highway just a few metres away - the bats took an average of 25 seconds to locate their treat.

'Degraded habitat'

And in almost half of those trials, the animals failed to locate the food.

"But even with the sound of a busy highway seven and a half metres away, they could still forage," said Dr Siemers.

"We were astonished by how well they coped with the noise, but their efficiency was greatly reduced."

Noise levels mimicking traffic up to 50m away affected the bats' ability to locate a meal.

This means, the researchers say, that each highway "degrades" an area of 50-60m of foraging habitat either side.

"It might not sound like much," Dr Siemers said, "but when you look at the thousands of kilometres of highway in a country like Germany, it adds up to quite a lot."

TURBINE ATTRACTION?

Traffic noise does not appear to affect the high frequency pulses that many bats emit in order to navigate. But this echolocation, whereby bats detect echoes as the pulses bounce off other objects, can be interrupted by another man-made structure - wind turbines. In a recent study, Chloe Long from Loughborough University, UK, and her colleagues, found slow-moving turbine blades might be invisible to echolocating bats. In some cases, the bats might even be attracted to the turbines, because the echoes they return are so similar to the "acoustic glints" produced by the motion of a flying insects' wings. "This could be attractive to bats in some way, or at least attract the curiosity of the bat," Ms Long told BBC News.
Name

Articles,51,Audio,23,Backyard,24,Barbed Wire,35,Bat Art,56,Bat Books,94,Bat Box,27,Bat Clothing,16,Bat Issues,642,Bat Stamps,1,Bats,4,Bats for Children,39,Bats for the Home,70,Electrocution,9,Events,39,info on bats,643,Jackie Sparrow,26,Microbats,469,Misc,121,Netting,40,Newsletter,5,Promoting,152,Rehab,92,Rehab 2011,7,Rehab 2012,25,Rehab 2013,15,Rehab 2014,6,Rehab 2015,108,Rehab 2016,136,Rehab 2017,73,Rehab 2018,29,Rehab 2019,2,Release Cage,2,RESCUE,74,Rescue 2011,1,Rescue 2012,7,RESCUE 2013,18,RESCUE 2014,8,RESCUE 2015,25,Rescue 2016,20,RESCUE 2017,16,Rescue 2018,10,Rescue 2019,6,Rob Mies,11,Shooting,2,Vegetation,27,Video,399,Virus,128,WebSites-Bat,45,
ltr
item
BatsRule!: Traffic noise is bad for foraging bats
Traffic noise is bad for foraging bats
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vE0CqUQtr3I/VWdfKObQW1I/AAAAAAABais/xs6p_XE-ouY/s1600/Traffic%2Bnoise%2Bis%2Bbad%2Bfor%2Bforaging%2Bbats.jpg
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vE0CqUQtr3I/VWdfKObQW1I/AAAAAAABais/xs6p_XE-ouY/s72-c/Traffic%2Bnoise%2Bis%2Bbad%2Bfor%2Bforaging%2Bbats.jpg
BatsRule!
http://batsrule-helpsavewildlife.blogspot.com/2013/01/traffic-noise-is-bad-for-foraging-bats.html
http://batsrule-helpsavewildlife.blogspot.com/
http://batsrule-helpsavewildlife.blogspot.com/
http://batsrule-helpsavewildlife.blogspot.com/2013/01/traffic-noise-is-bad-for-foraging-bats.html
true
4238281482117672351
UTF-8
Loaded All Posts Not found any posts VIEW ALL Readmore Reply Cancel reply Delete By Home PAGES POSTS View All RECOMMENDED FOR YOU LABEL ARCHIVE SEARCH ALL POSTS Not found any post match with your request Back Home Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat January February March April May June July August September October November December Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec just now 1 minute ago $$1$$ minutes ago 1 hour ago $$1$$ hours ago Yesterday $$1$$ days ago $$1$$ weeks ago more than 5 weeks ago Followers Follow THIS PREMIUM CONTENT IS LOCKED STEP 1: Share to a social network STEP 2: Click the link on your social network Copy All Code Select All Code All codes were copied to your clipboard Can not copy the codes / texts, please press [CTRL]+[C] (or CMD+C with Mac) to copy