Using bat flight trajectories recorded by GPS loggers, we developed a method to discriminate between foraging and commuting modes, such that we were able to quantify spatio-temporal features of these two navigational modes in R. f. nippon. Thus, it is possible to use our method to estimate phases of large-scale navigation among echolocating bats, i.e. foraging or commuting during nightly movement, based on the flight path. As a result, we first demonstrated that R. f. nippon alternated foraging within a time frame of a few minutes, which is quite similar to the Area Restricted Search (ARS) behavior observed in the movement patterns of animals such as some mammals, birds, and insects [26–28]. In addition, the full-night GPS tracking using pinpoint-50 showed that bats moved out of the roost at midnight while there were times when they could not be recorded. Such activity is consistent with the previous study on the usage of the night roost (i.e., a roost for resting) by the Japanese greater horseshoe bat [14]. These kinds of characteristics of foraging and commuting behavior should be investigated in the future because the sample size in the present study was small. We are confident however that it will provide very valuable knowledge in order to advance the understanding of foraging ecology of this bat species in the wild.
Habitat use
We also verified the habitat use of R. f. nippon during nightly foraging activity with fine resolution after dividing the whole measured path into commuting and the foraging modes. The main habitat used in both of the movement modes were forested areas, and the bats seemed to prefer flying within forest (see Fig. 3). Several factors may cause this habitat usage for the bats in our study area. First, forests are suitable for the flycatcher feeding style due to the abundance of tree branches. Second, Rhinolophus species generally have lower wing loading, which results in slow flight and good maneuverability [29]; flying within forests allows bats to avoid harsh weather conditions. Third, forests are a major source of flying insects, which are consumed by insectivorous bats. In a previous study conducted in the UK using radio telemetry, R. ferrumequinum preferred to fly over pastures and in forests [19, 30], whereas the bats in western Europe preferred residential areas and meadow orchards [20]. Our present data show that pastures, meadows, orchards (categorized into grassland in this study) and residential areas were rarely used by the bats. The reason of such difference in the habitat use of each population is unknown. Feeding style might be slightly different between the populations, or the environmental factors, such as landscape structure and available prey abundance in each habitat might affect habitat use. The landscape in this study was largely covered by forests than the landscapes in those previous studies. In the future, larger sample size and comparative study will be necessary to understand the habitat preference of this bat species.
In the forest, the bats often commuted along a road (Fig. 4). The forest road provided a sufficiently wide and open space for a car to pass through (Additional file 2), and bats flew along this road (asterisk in Fig. 4). Based on direct visual observation or infrared camera recordings in small-scale areas it has been demonstrated that bats fly along fixed routes, so-called flyways, when commuting to foraging sites [31–33]. Such a route-following behavior is one of the various large-scale navigation strategies of bats that have been previously reported [34], and bats are thought to use forest roads as navigation cues. Furthermore, the ultrasound detection range of bats is shorter than the ranges of visual sensory systems employed by other animals such as birds. Thus, when moving along a road that can be detected by receiving echoes from the ground and tree lines on the left/right side, bats may not only move easily and quickly, but these cues may also help in creating local spatial maps that could be accumulated for large-scale movement.
Case study
We recorded two cases of unrepeated commuting and foraging (bats C1 and D). For bat C1, the foraging time during one trip was relatively short and flight speed was clearly higher compared to those of other trips, even by the same individual (see Table 1). These data suggest that on that day, this bat flew with a goal other than foraging. Note that bat C1 might have flown at a higher speed than the other due to the wind effect: bat C1 received approximately 2 m/s wind from south, bat C2 received 1 m/s wind from west and bat E, F and G received 3–4 m/s wind from north (Japan Meteorological Agency, www.data.jma.go.jp). Previous studies have reported that many insectivorous bat species, such as Myotis and Plecotus species, travel considerable distances and swarm at underground sites in late summer and autumn in temperate regions [35–37] for mating [38, 39] and/or to assess potential hibernation sites. Although there is no evidence of swarming behavior by Rhinolophus species so far, it is possible that bat C1 has traveled a long distance because of an unknown social behavior during the mating season.
In contrast, bat D stayed continuously at a single site near the roost for over 4 h early in the night (Fig. 1C) (note that we visited this site and found that this was an area next to a pond, with a relatively low tree density). The positions of bat D had a Gaussian distribution in both the north-south and east-west directions (Additional file 3), with a greater variation along the north-south axis compared to the variation from our error-measurement when the logger was placed in a single location within the forest (Additional file 4, see Methods for details). This result suggests that these data were not the result of GPS logging error but rather a result of bat movements within the stay site near their roost. Note that, the bat’s position located discretely by GPS during the foraging mode should not appear to move because the fly-catching greater horseshoe bats fly back to the position where they perched before attacking insect [14]. Therefore, basically, it is thought to be hard to discriminate foraging or not (i.e., resting) from the foraging-mode trajectory data. In the case of bat D, the stay period was enormously longer than the other stays identified in this study. This bat might repeatedly change the hunting site in the nearby area in the long-time foraging.
Ethical considerations
As bio-logging studies of wild echolocating bats have recently flourished, data quality is likely to be prioritized under a trade-off between logger size and battery life, resulting in the use of data logger weighted more than 10% of the body mass [40, 41]. In this study, we limited the logger weight to be relatively small, i.e., less than 10% of the bat’s body mass, although the logger weight is recommended to be less than 3–5% of the body mass for the flying animals such as birds [42] and bats [43]. A previous study showed that no significant differences were observed between the behavior of echolocating bats (M. myotis and M. vivesi) carrying loggers with 15% of their body weight and non-tagged individuals [12]. The results of the present study showed that bats flew long distances at almost the same speed as reported by previous studies using radio telemetry [44, 45], suggesting that the influence of the data logger weight on bat flight performance was negligible. Nevertheless, the data logger needs to be smaller in the future in order to minimize the effect of the extra loading.
We also should consider how the stress caused by handling and logger attachment affects the bat’s movement, as it might behave or move differently than usual and/or might lose body weight. The results showed that the time when the tagged bats emerged from their roost in the present study was almost the same as in a previous study [14]. In addition, the bodyweight of the attached bats when recapturing after a couple of days did not obviously decrease compared to the first capture (see Methods for details), which is consist of the range of the bodyweight fluctuation observed in this bat species on a daily basis among the reared individuals in our laboratory. These observations suggest that the extra loading due to the logger had little effect on the habitat use of the horseshoe bats. Furthermore, we recaptured a female that was investigated in the previous year during its pregnancy and we could not find any damages. In the present investigation, we caught and attached loggers to a total of 27 bats. We only recaptured 10 bats (approximately 40% recapture rate) and succeeded in recovering the data from 7 individuals. In previous studies, the recapture rate of the greater horseshoe bats which were tagged with small metal rings (several few milli-meters) was also around 40% [14, 46]. Therefore, the low recapture rate in this study is unlikely due to the extra loading from the GPS data logger alone. However, at present, the effect of logger attachment on the recovery rate of individuals as well as local populations has not been quantitatively assessed. Therefore, detailed investigations of the effects of logger attachment on the bats’ behavior and health are needed.