Signal Processing Systems for Echolocation in the Bat's Brain

Neurobiology of echolocation in bats.

Echolocating bats (sub-order: Microchiroptera) form a highly successful group of animals, comprising approximately 700 species and an estimated 25% of living mammals. Many echolocating bats are nocturnal predators that have evolved a biological sonar system to orient and forage in three-dimensional space. Acoustic signal processing and vocal-motor control are tightly coupled, and successful ech...

Echolocation in Dolphins and Bats

The evolution of echolocation in bats.

Recent molecular phylogenies have changed our perspective on the evolution of echolocation in bats. These phylogenies suggest that certain bats with sophisticated echolocation (e.g. horseshoe bats) share a common ancestry with non-echolocating bats (e.g. Old World fruit bats). One interpretation of these trees presumes that laryngeal echolocation (calls produced in the larynx) probably evolved ...

Auditory scene analysis by echolocation in bats.

Echolocating bats transmit ultrasonic vocalizations and use information contained in the reflected sounds to analyze the auditory scene. Auditory scene analysis, a phenomenon that applies broadly to all hearing vertebrates, involves the grouping and segregation of sounds to perceptually organize information about auditory objects. The perceptual organization of sound is influenced by the spectr...

Scaling of echolocation call parameters in bats.

I investigated the scaling of echolocation call parameters (frequency, duration and repetition rate) in bats in a functional context. Low-duty-cycle bats operate with search phase cycles of usually less than 20 %. They process echoes in the time domain and are therefore intolerant of pulse-echo overlap. High-duty-cycle (>30 %) species use Doppler shift compensation, and they separate pulse and ...