Bat Echolocation Research: A handbook for planning and conducting acoustic studies

Echolocation provides an acoustic window on the behavior of most species of bats. Donald R. Griffin's book (Listening in the Dark: The Acoustic Orientation of Bats and Men) gave us a preview of what we might hear through this window. This Handbook illustrates how a small window has turned into a giant screen. The study of bat echolocation has progressed from a boutique curiosity and source of wonder to a discipline spanning areas of science from neurobiology through behavior, ecology, evolution, and environmental science.

Many people who study bats use echolocation as a focus for their work. To some this means, for example, neurobiology, communication behavior, or environmental assessment. Whatever the goal, diversity is an underlying and overarching reality. At one level, diversity means that different species take quite different approaches to echolocation. At another level, individual differences remind us that echolocation is a conscious behavior. The same bat may, for instance, use quite different echolocation calls over the course of a night, a season, or its life. How much of echolocation behavior is inherited, and how much is learned?