Postdoctoral Fellowship: PRFB: Sensorimotor behavioral dynamics of echolocating bats during collective flight

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2024, Broadening Participation of Groups Underrepresented in Biology. The Fellowship supports a research and training plan for the Fellow that will increase the participation of groups underrepresented in biology. Bats navigate their surroundings by making calls and listening for echoes as they bounce off objects near them (echolocating).

This project will investigate the behavior of echolocating bats in groups of bats by analyzing their echolocation sounds and determining how they adjust these sounds when around other bats. Echolocating bats can navigate completely dark spaces using their advanced sense of hearing to listen for weak echoes reflecting off surfaces, even when surrounded by many other echolocating bats.

Understanding how bats accomplish this will help engineers design better sensing systems, such as autonomous sonar robots, that can perform in challenging environments involving interference and uncertainty. This will also further the understanding of group behaviors of multiple bat species, which can lead to better surveying and conservation efforts.

The activities of this project will be leveraged to train students from diverse backgrounds in conducting research, and to support the fellow’s service activities in scientific organizations to highlight the research of postdoctoral researchers from historically underrepresented groups and strengthen connections within the postdoctoral community.

This research involves recording groups of echolocating bats with synchronized arrays of ultrasonic microphones and thermal cameras. At least three species will be recorded at natural roosting sites: Myotis lucifigus, Myotis grisescens, and Tadarida brasiliensis. Synchronized acoustic and video data will be used to track the flight and echolocation behavior of the collective group and individuals within the group and determine whether individual bats dynamically adjust their echolocation (for example, their frequencies or emission rate) based on the presence of other echolocation sounds.

These analyses will be used to build parametrized computational models of the sensorimotor behaviors of each species and identify similarities across species. This modeling work will enhance understanding of the behavioral heuristics used by individual bats taking part in collective group behaviors. To accomplish these goals, the fellow will conduct fieldwork, and build partnerships with a variety of organizations.

Courses on deep-learning techniques will allow the fellow to gain the computational skills required for modeling echolocation behaviors.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.