Navigating, Decision-Making and Sociality, Studying Behavior in the Wild from Birth to Adulthood

Descripción del proyecto

Seguimiento de murciélagos en la naturaleza

El zorro volador de Mauricio, «Pteropus niger», es un murciélago frugívoro y el mamífero endémico de mayor tamaño de la República de Mauricio. Estos murciélagos con actividad crepuscular son sociables, ya que perchan en grandes grupos, se comunican entre sí y emiten varios sonidos. El equipo del proyecto Behavior-Island, financiado por el Consejo Europeo de Investigación, realizará un seguimiento de una población de gran tamaño de esta especie a fin de conocerla mejor. Para estudiar su comportamiento en la naturaleza, se empleará un nuevo sistema de GPS inverso (ATLAS) que permitirá el seguimiento simultáneo de mil murciélagos. Los murciélagos permanecen toda su vida en la isla, lo que permitirá seguir a los individuos desde su nacimiento hasta que alcancen la edad adulta. Los hallazgos ayudarán asimismo a proteger el zorro volador de Mauricio, que está amenazado y en peligro de extinción.

Objetivo

In the movie the Truman Show, Truman Burbank is astonished when discovering that he spent his entire life in a TV show. Monitoring a humans life is unethical, but many sociologists secretly dream about running such an experiment. Behavior-Island will allow to continuously monitor and manipulate a large population of bats from birth to adulthood. Behavior-Island will be established on Mauritius - the home of P. niger, which is a very interesting bat-model that: (a) lives for decades relying on long-term memory; (b) roosts in large colonies and is highly social; (c) exhibits immense spatio-temporal memory; and (d) is large enough to carry many sensors allowing to track its pups from day one.
Even with current state-of-the-art technologies, studying animal behavior in the wild is highly limited because: (1) it is extremely difficult to monitor the same individual over long periods while also monitoring its environment and (2) it is almost impossible to monitor a substantial part of a population and thus we know little about social interactions. We will overcome these limitations by using a new reverse-GPS system (ATLAS) allowing simultaneous tracking of 1000 bats. Notably, because the bats never leave the island, we will monitor individuals from birth to adulthood. ATLAS also provides locations in real-time, allowing to manipulate specific individuals in the wild and to examine their response. We have already tracked bats with a preliminary ATLAS system on Mauritius.
Combined with an arsenal of additional technologies, ATLAS will allow studying fundamental aspects of behavior in the wild, for the first time, including: Navigation and its ontogeny; Long-term spatio-temporal memory, Decision making and Sociality. We will examine how experience and personality interact to shape behavior, and we will monitor an entire colony, documenting behavior in the population level. Because, P. niger is endangered and threatened, our work will also contribute to its protection