The Daily Bulletin

Please join the Biology Department and the Great Lakes Center for the seminar “From Buffalo State through Nutrition Educator and Dietitian to Family Medicine – A Career Journey Calling the Shots: How Vocal Roles Shape Collective Decisions in Disk-winged Bats,” presented by Dr. Maria Sagot on Monday, April 14, at 3:00 p.m. in Bulger Communication Center 214. Attendees are welcome to arrive at 2:30 p.m. to enjoy coffee and cookies leading up to the seminar.

Research Seminar Abstract: Social animals often rely on communication and coordination to navigate collective challenges like foraging or finding shelter, especially in unpredictable environments. In this talk, I explore how Thyroptera tricolor (Spix’s disk-winged bat), a species that roosts in ephemeral furled leaves and forms stable social groups, uses vocal communication to coordinate group decisions during roost finding. Individuals differ consistently in vocal behavior, forming a dynamic similar to producer–scrounger systems in other animals: some bats generate social calls that others follow. We investigated how these stable vocal roles affect group efficiency and cohesion, whether non-vocal individuals rely more on social information, and how kinship and associations influence calling behavior. Through a combination of field and flight cage experiments in Costa Rica, we found that groups with a mix of vocal and non-vocal individuals locate roosts more efficiently, but a high proportion of vocal bats can lead to group fragmentation. Non-vocal individuals were more responsive to social calls, supporting the idea that behavioral diversity improves collective outcomes. However, relatedness and association strength did not predict calling rates—vocal behavior was instead best explained by individual identity, suggesting these roles are intrinsic traits rather than responses to social bonds. Together, these findings highlight the role of stable individual differences in shaping social dynamics and demonstrate how collective decision-making emerges from a balance between signalers and receivers. This work contributes to our understanding of how behavioral variation and communication systems support group living in complex ecological contexts.