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Co-evolution

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Predator–Prey Interactions: Co-evolution between Bats and Their Prey

Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Animal Sciences ((BRIEFSANIMAL))

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Abstract

The precision of bat echolocation has continuously fascinated scientists since the eighteenth century. It enables bats to find prey as small as 0.05–0.2 mm in complete darkness and even to determine the kind of prey from the echo of its own call reflected off the prey. Besides active acoustic detection , some bat species also use passive listening for sounds generated by the prey itself, for example frog mating calls or the rustling sounds of crawling insects. Bats are therefore well adapted for hunting and can eat up to 25% of their body weight in insects each night, exerting much selection pressure on their prey. In response to this pressure, bat prey has evolved a range of defences both auditory and non-auditory. Frogs, for example, can listen for bat echolocation and cease their calling to female frogs. The evolution of audition in insects enables them to detect bats before the bats detect them, allowing insects to take evasive action . This interaction between predator and prey may represent a system of co-evolution. Here, we define co-evolution as a process in which the evolution of traits in the predator is in direct response to the evolution of traits in the prey which in turn evolved in direct response to the traits of the predator and so on. Co-evolution is thus an iterative process of both reciprocal (each lineage responds to the other) and specific (evolution of a trait in one lineage responds specifically to a trait in the other) adaptations .

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Animal Evolution and Systematics Group, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

    David Steve Jacobs

  2. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

    Anna Bastian

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  1. David Steve Jacobs
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  2. Anna Bastian
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Correspondence to David Steve Jacobs .

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Jacobs, D.S., Bastian, A. (2016). Co-evolution. In: Predator–Prey Interactions: Co-evolution between Bats and Their Prey. SpringerBriefs in Animal Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32492-0_1

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