Published 2022 | Version v1
Journal article Restricted

Drone exploration of bat echolocation: A UAV-borne multimicrophone array to study bat echolocation

Description

(Uploaded by Plazi for the Bat Literature Project) Multimicrophone array techniques offer crucial insight into bat echolocation, yet they severely undersample the environments bats operate in as they are limited in geographic placement and mobility. UAVs are excellent candidates to greatly increase the environments in which such arrays can be deployed, but the impact of UAV noise on recording quality and the UAV's behavioral impact on the bats may affect usability. We developed a UAV-­borne multimicrophone setup capable of recording bat echolocation across diverse environments. We quantify and mitigate the impact of UAV noise on the recording setup and test the recording capability of the array by recording four common Danish bat species: Pipistrellus pygmaeus, Myotis daubentonii, Eptesicus serotinus, and Nyctalus noctula. The UAV produces substantial noise at ultrasonic frequencies relevant to many bat species. However, suspending the array 30 m below the UAV attenuates the noise to levels below the self-­noise of our recording system at 20 kHz and above, and we successfully record and acoustically localize all four bat species. The behavioral impact of the UAV is minimal as all four species approached the array to within 1 m and all emitted recordable feeding buzzes. UAV-­ borne multimicrophone arrays will allow us to quantify bat echolocation in hitherto unexplored habitats and provide crucial insight into how bats operate their sonar across their entire natural habitat.

Files

Restricted

The record is publicly accessible, but files are restricted to users with access.

Additional details

Identifiers

URL
hash://md5/80fdc2513b61d47aec9ea8939b888f6b
URN
urn:lsid:zotero.org:groups:5435545:items:LMK4TVII
DOI
10.1002/ece3.9577

Biodiversity

Class
Mammalia
Kingdom
Animalia
Order
Chiroptera
Phylum
Chordata