skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Search for: All records

Creators/Authors contains: "Dechmann, Dina KN"

Note: When clicking on a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) number, you will be taken to an external site maintained by the publisher. Some full text articles may not yet be available without a charge during the embargo (administrative interval).
What is a DOI Number?

Some links on this page may take you to non-federal websites. Their policies may differ from this site.

  1. Intraspecific variation in morphology and behavior is widespread, especially in species with large distribution ranges. This includes foraging which can vary according to the local resource landscape. How this may be linked to differences in social structure, especially in socially foraging species is less known. Greater spear-nosed bats are well known for their large repertoire of often highly complex social behaviors. In Trinidad, they form stable groups of unrelated females that recruit other members to temporally unpredictable flowering balsa trees. We compared these findings with a dataset of capture data, GPS tracks, and observations collected over six years in a colony in Panamá. We found profound differences in the foraging behavior and group stability ofPhyllostomus hastatusduring the dry season where social behaviors were expected. Female bats did not coordinate commutes to exploit distinct foraging resources as a group. Instead, females commuted individually to very distant foraging areas which overlapped between groups. Linked to this we found groups to be unstable in size over the short and long term. Our findings highlight the large intraspecific variation and indicate a strong influence of the local resource landscape and associated benefits of social foraging on the social structure in these bats and possibly many other animals. 
    more » « less
    Free, publicly-accessible full text available March 20, 2026