Figures
An echolocating bat (Myotis bechsteinii) avoiding collision with a plant while searching for a moth.
Plants are very important in a bat's everyday life. They serve both as informative landmarks that a bat should use and as obstacles that it should avoid. An echolocating bat can use and avoid plants in complete darkness, using echolocation and relying on plant echoes. In this work the authors study the characteristics of plant echoes (see Yovel et al., 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000429). They analyze the relation between the physical properties of a plant (e.g., its leaf size and density) and its echo, and examine the influence of the bat's sensory system on the echoes.
Image Credit: Dietmar Nill.
Citation: (2009) PLoS Computational Biology Issue Image | Vol. 5(7) July 2009. PLoS Comput Biol 5(7): ev05.i07. https://doi.org/10.1371/image.pcbi.v05.i07
Published: July 31, 2009
Copyright: © 2009 Dietmar Nill. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Plants are very important in a bat's everyday life. They serve both as informative landmarks that a bat should use and as obstacles that it should avoid. An echolocating bat can use and avoid plants in complete darkness, using echolocation and relying on plant echoes. In this work the authors study the characteristics of plant echoes (see Yovel et al., 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000429). They analyze the relation between the physical properties of a plant (e.g., its leaf size and density) and its echo, and examine the influence of the bat's sensory system on the echoes.
Image Credit: Dietmar Nill.