Bats Are Acoustically Attracted to Mutualistic Carnivorous Plants

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.05.054

•A carnivorous plant features an ultrasound reflector attractive for mutualistic bats

•This reflector enables the bats to easily find and identify the plant’s pitchers

•The bats fertilize these Paleotropical plants with feces in exchange for roosts

•Such reflectors were convergently acquired in Neotropical bat-pollinated plants

Summary

Mutualisms between plants and animals shape the world’s ecosystems [ 1, 2 ]. In such interactions, achieving contact with the partner species is imperative. Plants regularly advertise themselves with signals that specifically appeal to the partner’s perceptual preferences [ 3–5 ]. For example, many plants have acquired traits such as brightly colored, fragrant flowers that attract pollinators with visual, olfactory, or—in the case of a few bat-pollinated flowers—even acoustic stimuli in the form of echo-reflecting structures [ 6–9 ].

Michael G. Schöner

Caroline R. Schöner

Ralph Simon

T. Ulmar Grafe,

Sébastien J. Puechmaille,

Liaw Lin Ji,

Gerald Kerth

4Co-first author

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