Parnell's mustached bat (''Pteronotus parnellii'') is an

insectivorous A robber fly eating a hoverfly An insectivore is a carnivorous animal or plant that eats insects. An alternative term is entomophage, which can also refer to the human practice of eating insects. The first vertebrate insectivores were ...

bat native to the Americas. It ranges from southern

Sonora Sonora (), officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Sonora ( en, Free and Sovereign State of Sonora), is one of the 31 states which, along with Mexico City, comprise the Administrative divisions of Mexico, Federal Entities of Mexico. The state is d ...

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

, south to

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

. It has a wider historical range; fossil specimens have been collected on the island of

New Providence New Providence is the most populous island in the Bahamas, containing more than 70% of the total population. It is the location of the national capital city of Nassau, whose boundaries are coincident with the island; it had a population of 246 ...

in the Bahamas. ChilonycterisOsburniFord

The bat was named for the British zoologist

Richard Parnell Richard Parnell FRSE MWS (1810–28 October 1882) was a British physician as well as an amateur zoologist, ichthyologist and agrostologist. He gives his name to Parnell's moustached bat. The grass ''Parnelli'' is also named after him. He was ...

Biology

This is a large bat with a forearm length of about . The ears are short and pointed, and lack noseleafs. The lips are wrinkled up and modified into a funnel shape. This bat is most common in moist habitat types, and it can be found in some dry deciduous forests. It is mostly nocturnal, roosting in caves and mines during the day and emerging shortly after sunset for five to seven hours of activity. Parnell's mustached bat is an insectivore, taking a variety of insects such as

beetle Beetles are insects that form the order Coleoptera (), in the superorder Endopterygota. Their front pair of wings are hardened into wing-cases, elytra, distinguishing them from most other insects. The Coleoptera, with about 400,000 describ ...

moth Moths are a paraphyletic group of insects that includes all members of the order Lepidoptera that are not butterflies, with moths making up the vast majority of the order. There are thought to be approximately 160,000 species of moth, many of w ...

flies Flies are insects of the order Diptera, the name being derived from the Greek δι- ''di-'' "two", and πτερόν ''pteron'' "wing". Insects of this order use only a single pair of wings to fly, the hindwings having evolved into advanced ...

, and

dragonflies A dragonfly is a flying insect belonging to the infraorder Anisoptera below the order Odonata. About 3,000 extant species of true dragonfly are known. Most are tropical, with fewer species in temperate regions. Loss of wetland habitat threa ...

. While many insectivorous bats prefer river habitats for the availability of aquatic insects, it generally hunts in non-river habitats due to the availability of more nutritious food items. This comes with a greater energy cost, as such habitats typically have more foliage, requiring increased maneuverability. Females gather in warm caves with other species, including the

Cuban flower bat The Cuban flower bat (''Phyllonycteris poeyi''), also called Poey's flower bat, is a species of bat in the family Phyllostomidae. It is found on the Caribbean islands of Cuba and Hispaniola (in both Haiti and the Dominican Republic). Descrip ...

(''Phyllonycteris poeyi''), during the breeding season. They give birth around July and nurse pups until around October. The pups only leave the safety of their birth cave to forage and hunt when their forearm length reaches adult size. In all species, the calls of newborn pups vary from those of mature bats. Typically the frequency of their calls increases with age.Vater, M., et al. 2003
Development of echolocation calls in the mustached bat, ''Pteronotus parnellii''.
''Journal of Neurophysiology'' 90(4) 2274-90.

Echolocation

Parnell's mustached bat produces long constant frequency (CF) calls. These are mixed with brief frequency modulations (FM), and are

harmonic A harmonic is a wave with a frequency that is a positive integer multiple of the ''fundamental frequency'', the frequency of the original periodic signal, such as a sinusoidal wave. The original signal is also called the ''1st harmonic'', the ...

, consisting of a second, more intense constant frequency of about 61

kHz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose expression in terms of SI base units is s−1, meaning that on ...

. The bat adjusts the CF component of their calls so that their second harmonic echos are consistently received at around 61 kHz. The

cochlea The cochlea is the part of the inner ear involved in hearing. It is a spiral-shaped cavity in the bony labyrinth, in humans making 2.75 turns around its axis, the modiolus. A core component of the cochlea is the Organ of Corti, the sensory org ...

, and other components of the inner ear, are designed to receive frequencies approximating 61 kHz. The bat uses the long CF portion to evaluate relative motion, and the terminal downward FM to determine target distance. In addition to this sonar, the species has several other modes of communication. It is the only bat in the family

Mormoopidae The family Mormoopidae contains bats known generally as mustached bats, ghost-faced bats, and naked-backed bats. They are found in the Americas from the Southwestern United States to Southeastern Brazil. They are distinguished by the presence ...

to have evolved Doppler-sensitive sonar due to the long CF call component.

Biology

Echolocation

References

Further reading