Long-legged Bat
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scientific classification | ||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
| Macrophyllum macrophyllum Schinz, 1821 |
The Long-legged Bat, Macrophyllum macrophyllum, is a bat species from South and Central America.
It hunts close over the water surfaces of lakes and slowly flowing streams, where it seizes insects right above or directly off the surface in a similar manner to Noctilio leporinus and Myotis daubentoni. This is an interesting example of convergent evolution which may imply just how valuable a habitat the water surface is to insectivorous bats.
The sound emission, in constrast is quite different from the other water-hunting bats. M. macrophyllum has a very prominent noseleaf, and it emits the echolocation sounds through the nostrils. The time frequency characteristics of the sounds are almost identical to Micronycteris microtis: short (1-2 ms) multiharmonic FM sweeps with most energy in the second harmonic between 95 and 75 kHz. However, the sounds resemble those of a number of Phyllostomidae bats, including Micronycteris microtis, but new results indicate that the intensity is significantly higher.
Behavioral observations have shown that in the final phases of the pursuit when it homes in on the prey the noseleaf moves to point forward/downward apparently to focus sound energy on the prey. How does this facial reconfiguration help the animal in the discrimination process? We don't yet know.
