Social foraging in vampire bats is predicted by long-term cooperative relationships

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy Nevard
Keyword(s):  
Social Foraging ◽  
Cooperative Relationships ◽  
Vampire Bats

scholarly journals Social foraging in vampire bats is predicted by long-term cooperative relationships

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon P. Ripperger ◽  
Gerald G. Carter
Keyword(s):  
Social Evolution ◽  
Group Living ◽  
Food Sharing ◽  
Social Foraging ◽  
Social Grooming ◽  
Cooperative Relationships ◽  
Vampire Bats ◽  
In Captivity ◽  
Access To Food

AbstractStable social bonds in group-living animals can provide greater access to food. A striking example is that female vampire bats often regurgitate blood to socially bonded kin and nonkin that failed in their nightly hunt. Food-sharing relationships form via preferred associations and social grooming within roosts. However, it remains unclear whether these cooperative relationships extend beyond the roost. To evaluate if long-term cooperative relationships in vampire bats play a role in foraging, we tested if foraging encounters measured by proximity sensors could be explained by wild roosting proximity, kinship, or rates of co-feeding, social grooming, and food sharing during 22 months in captivity. We assessed evidence for six hypothetical scenarios of social foraging, ranging from individual to collective hunting. We found that female vampire bats departed their roost individually, but often re-united far outside the roost. Nonrandomly repeating foraging encounters were predicted by within-roost association and histories of cooperation in captivity, even when controlling for kinship. Foraging bats demonstrated both affiliative and competitive interactions and a previously undescribed call type. We suggest that social foraging could have implications for social evolution if ‘local’ cooperation within the roost and ‘global’ competition outside the roost enhances fitness interdependence between frequent roostmates.

scholarly journals Social foraging in vampire bats is predicted by long-term cooperative relationships

PLoS Biology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (9) ◽  
pp. e3001366
Author(s):  
Simon P. Ripperger ◽  
Gerald G. Carter
Keyword(s):  
Social Evolution ◽  
Group Living ◽  
Food Sharing ◽  
Social Foraging ◽  
Social Grooming ◽  
Cooperative Relationships ◽  
Vampire Bats ◽  
In Captivity ◽  
Access To Food

Stable social bonds in group-living animals can provide greater access to food. A striking example is that female vampire bats often regurgitate blood to socially bonded kin and nonkin that failed in their nightly hunt. Food-sharing relationships form via preferred associations and social grooming within roosts. However, it remains unclear whether these cooperative relationships extend beyond the roost. To evaluate if long-term cooperative relationships in vampire bats play a role in foraging, we tested if foraging encounters measured by proximity sensors could be explained by wild roosting proximity, kinship, or rates of co-feeding, social grooming, and food sharing during 21 months in captivity. We assessed evidence for 6 hypothetical scenarios of social foraging, ranging from individual to collective hunting. We found that closely bonded female vampire bats departed their roost separately, but often reunited far outside the roost. Repeating foraging encounters were predicted by within-roost association and histories of cooperation in captivity, even when accounting for kinship. Foraging bats demonstrated both affiliative and competitive interactions with different social calls linked to each interaction type. We suggest that social foraging could have implications for social evolution if “local” within-roost cooperation and “global” outside-roost competition enhances fitness interdependence between frequent roostmates.

scholarly journals Development of new food-sharing relationships among nonkin vampire bats

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald G. Carter ◽  
Damien R. Farine ◽  
Rachel J. Crisp ◽  
Julia K. Vrtilek ◽  
Simon P. Ripperger ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Bonds ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Food Sharing ◽  
Cooperative Relationships ◽  
Vampire Bats ◽  
Term Pair ◽  
Show Evidence ◽  
Survival And Reproduction ◽  
High Investment

AbstractIn an individualized animal society, social bonds can foster cooperation and enhance survival and reproduction. Cooperative bonds often exist among kin, but nonkin can also develop high-investment cooperative bonds that share similarities with human friendship. How do such bonds form? One theory suggests that strangers should ‘test the waters’ of a new relationship by making small initial cooperative investments and gradually escalating them with good partners. This ‘raising-the-stakes’ strategy is demonstrated by human strangers in short-term economic games, but it remains unclear whether it applies to helping in a natural long-term social bond. Here we show evidence that unfamiliar vampire bats (Desmodus rotundus) selectively escalate low-cost investments in allogrooming before developing higher-cost food-sharing relationships. We introduced females from geographically distant sites in pairs or groups and observed that bats established new reciprocal grooming relationships, and that increasing grooming rates predicted the occurrence of first food donations, at which point grooming rates no longer increased. New food-sharing relationships emerged reciprocally in 14% of female pairs, typically over 10-15 months, and developed faster when strangers lacked alternative familiar partners. A gradual grooming-to-sharing transition among past strangers suggests that ‘raising the stakes’ might be more evident when tracking multiple cooperative behaviours as new relationships form, rather than measuring a single behavior in an established relationship. ‘Raising the stakes’ could play a similar underappreciated role across a broader spectrum of social decisions with long-term consequences, such as joining a new social group or forming a long-term pair-bond.Significance statementVampire bats form long-term cooperative social bonds that involve reciprocal food sharing. How do two unrelated bats go from being strangers to having a high-investment food-sharing relationship? We introduced unfamiliar bats and found evidence that low-cost grooming paves the way for higher-cost food donations. Food sharing emerged in a reciprocal fashion and it emerged faster when two strangers did not have access to their original groupmates. The bats that formed new food-sharing relationships had a history of escalating reciprocal grooming up until the food sharing began. Our finding that unfamiliar nonkin vampire bats appear to gradually and selectively transition from low-cost to high-cost cooperative behaviors is the first evidence that nonhuman individuals ‘raise the stakes’ when forming new cooperative relationships.

Periodic monitoring of vampire bats and rabies: a new framework for animal restoration projects in the Neotropics

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fernando Gonçalves ◽  
Daniel G. Streicker ◽  
Mauro Galetti
Keyword(s):  
Disease Transmission ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Multidisciplinary Teams ◽  
Risk Area ◽  
Food Web Structure ◽  
Land Bridge ◽  
High Risk Area ◽  
Restoration Project ◽  
Vampire Bats

Nowadays, restoration project might lead to increased public engagement and enthusiasm for biodiversity and is receiving increased media attention in major newspapers, TED talks and the scientific literature. However, empirical research on restoration project is rare, fragmented, and geographically biased and long-term studies that monitor indirect and unexpected effects are needed to support future management decisions especially in the Neotropical area. Changes in animal population dynamics and community composition following species (re)introduction may have unanticipated consequences for a variety of downstream ecosystem processes, including food web structure, predator-prey systems and infectious disease transmission. Recently, an unprecedented study in Brazil showed changes in vampire bat feeding following a rewilding project and further transformed the land-bridge island into a high-risk area for rabies transmission. Due the lessons learned from ongoing project, we present a novel approach on how to anticipate, monitor, and mitigate the vampire bats and rabies in rewilding projects. We pinpoint a series of precautions and the need for long-term monitoring of vampire bats and rabies responses to rewilding projects and highlighted the importance of multidisciplinary teams of scientist and managers focusing on prevention educational program of rabies risk transmitted by bats. In addition, monitoring the relative abundance of vampire bats, considering reproductive control by sterilization and oral vaccines that autonomously transfer among bats would reduce the probability, size and duration of rabies outbreaks. The rewilding assessment framework presented here responds to calls to better integrate the science and practice of rewilding and also could be used for long-term studying of bat-transmitted pathogen in the Neotropical area as the region is considered a geographic hotspots of “missing bat zoonoses”.

Swiss Cooperation in the Travel and Tourism Sector: Long-term Relationships and Superior Performance

2019 ◽  
Vol 59 (6) ◽  
pp. 1044-1060
Author(s):  
Vu Thi Thao ◽  
Widar von Arx ◽  
Jonas Frölicher
Keyword(s):  
Public Transport ◽  
Research Area ◽  
Superior Performance ◽  
Cooperative Relationships ◽  
Travel And Tourism ◽  
Cooperative Strategies ◽  
Customer Type ◽  
Cooperative Relationship ◽  
High Degree

Despite a growing body of research on the interface and relationship between transport and tourism, this research area remains undeveloped. Using Switzerland as a case study, the present study aims to investigate the level of integration between public transport and tourism companies, the enablers of their long-term cooperative relationship and outstanding performance, seen from the perspective of the public transport companies. A mixed methods approach is used to provide greater insights into how these companies cooperate with each other. Our findings suggest that public transport companies adopt different cooperative strategies with different types of partners. They are able to maintain long-term cooperative relationships due to strong cooperation in sales, a long tradition of cooperation, a high degree of involvement in national public organizations, and their central focus on the customer. Type of partner, sales, product design and pricing, and service provision have statistically significant effects on cooperative performance.

Fairness, Commitment, and Inequality

2008 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
István Back
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Ecological Model ◽  
Conditional Cooperation ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
Successful Strategy ◽  
Cooperative Relationships ◽  
Competitive Environments ◽  
Interaction Partners ◽  
Evolutionary Stable Strategies

Conditional cooperation is a prominent explanation of reciprocal cooperation in repeated exchange. However, empirical evidence for commitment behavior indicates that people tend to build long-term cooperative relationships characterized by largely unconditional cooperation. Using an agent-based ecological model, earlier work showed that in competitive environments commitment can be a more successful strategy than fair reciprocity. We move further in two respects. First, we add the possibility of randomly mutating strategies under evolutionary pressures. Our results show the lack of evolutionary stable strategies but we also find that commitment strategies still outperform fairness strategies on average. Our second extension introduces inequality in individual capabilities. We find that inequality shifts the balance from commitment towards fairness strategies. Our explanation is that under inequality, strategies benefit from changing interaction partners from time to time because this gives more agents access to strong partners.

scholarly journals AN IMPROVED APPROACH TO THE SUBCONTRACTING PROCUREMENT PROCESS IN A LEAN CONSTRUCTION SETTING

2014 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 389-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Yen-Liang Yin ◽  
H. Ping Tserng ◽  
Shih Ning Toong ◽  
Thanh Long Ngo
Keyword(s):  
Construction Projects ◽  
Lean Construction ◽  
Information Platform ◽  
Procurement Process ◽  
Cooperative Relationships ◽  
Common Information ◽  
Construction Risk ◽  
Potential Risks ◽  
Engineering Projects

The subcontracting procurement process is one of the most important issues impacting the costs of engineering projects and construction projects, in particular. Traditional procedures of subcontracting procurement tend to limit the opportunities for price negotiation and cooperative relationships between contractors and neglect potential issues such as engineering interface, construction risk, and waste. Based on case studies of construction projects, we propose a “lean” subcontracting procurement process (LSPP) drawing from lean construction theory. The process consists of a novel Seven-Arrangement operation plan and four types of standard operating flows. Not only does the proposed LSPP help sub-contractors eliminate various types of waste in construction projects, it also establishes a common information platform and cooperative environment that help participating contractors understand the work emphasis of each operation and the whole operation in sequence. As a result, the relationships between participating contractors become cooperative, potential risks in construction projects can be discovered early, and profits are shared between contractors. Thus, this process allows contractors to obtain long-term benefits.

scholarly journals Reproductive seasonality, sex ratio and philopatry in Argentina's common vampire bats

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 160959 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. A. Delpietro ◽  
R. G. Russo ◽  
G. G. Carter ◽  
R. D. Lord ◽  
G. L. Delpietro
Keyword(s):  
Specific Information ◽  
Adult Males ◽  
Reproductive Seasonality ◽  
Tropical Regions ◽  
Young Males ◽  
Young Females ◽  
Vampire Bats ◽  
Lactating Females ◽  
Free Ranging

Common vampire bats ( Desmodus rotundus ) are a key rabies vector in South America. Improved management of this species requires long-term, region-specific information. To investigate patterns of demography and dispersal, we analysed 13 642 captures of common vampire bats in Northern Argentina from the period 1969–2004. In contrast with findings from more tropical regions, we found reproductive seasonality with peak pregnancy in September and peak lactation in February. Curiously, sex ratios were consistently male-biased both in maternity roosts and at foraging sites. Males comprised 57% of 9509 adults caught at night, 57% of 1078 juveniles caught at night, 57% of 603 juveniles caught in roosts during the day, and 55% of 103 newborns and mature fetuses. Most observed roosts were in man-made structures. Movements of 1.5–54 km were most frequent in adult males, followed by young males, adult females and young females. At night, males visited maternity roosts, and non-pregnant, non-lactating females visited bachelor roosts. Males fed earlier in the night. Finally, we report new longevity records for free-ranging vampire bats: 16 and 17 years of age for a female and male, respectively. Our results are consistent with model predictions that sex-biased movements might play a key role in rabies transmission between vampire bat populations.

scholarly journals Social dominance and cooperation in female vampire bats

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (7) ◽  
pp. 210266
Author(s):  
Rachel J. Crisp ◽  
Lauren J. N. Brent ◽  
Gerald G. Carter
Keyword(s):  
Dominance Hierarchy ◽  
Social Rank ◽  
Group Living ◽  
Experimental System ◽  
Food Sharing ◽  
Competitive Interactions ◽  
Female Dominance ◽  
Cooperative Relationships ◽  
Vampire Bats ◽  
In The Wild

When group-living animals develop individualized social relationships, they often regulate cooperation and conflict through a dominance hierarchy. Female common vampire bats have been an experimental system for studying cooperative relationships, yet surprisingly little is known about female conflict. Here, we recorded the outcomes of 1023 competitive interactions over food provided ad libitum in a captive colony of 33 vampire bats (24 adult females and their young). We found a weakly linear dominance hierarchy using three common metrics (Landau's h ’ measure of linearity, triangle transitivity and directional consistency). However, patterns of female dominance were less structured than in many other group-living mammals. Female social rank was not clearly predicted by body size, age, nor reproductive status, and competitive interactions were not correlated with kinship, grooming nor food sharing. We therefore found no evidence that females groomed or shared food up a hierarchy or that differences in rank explained asymmetries in grooming or food sharing. A possible explanation for such apparently egalitarian relationships among female vampire bats is the scale of competition. Female vampire bats that are frequent roostmates might not often directly compete for food in the wild.

scholarly journals The role of past experience in development of feeding behavior in common vampire bats

PeerJ ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. e7448 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jineth Berrío-Martínez ◽  
Samuel Kaiser ◽  
Michelle Nowak ◽  
Rachel A. Page ◽  
Gerald G. Carter
Keyword(s):  
Life History Strategy ◽  
Past Experience ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Blood Temperature ◽  
Age Dependent ◽  
Vampire Bats ◽  
In The Wild ◽  
Foraging Skills

The life history strategy of common vampire bats (Desmodus rotundus) suggests that learning might play a role in development of their foraging skills. We took advantage of 12 captive births in a study colony of vampire bats to test the role of past experience in two aspects of feeding. First, we compared preferences for blood temperature in 32 wild-born vampire bats versus 11 captive-born vampire bats that had only previously fed on blood of ambient temperature or colder. We found no evidence for a preference in either group for blood presented at 4 °C versus 37 °C. Second, we tested whether captive-born vampire bats with no previous experience of feeding on live animals could successfully feed on a live chicken. Five of 12 naïve captive-born bats were able to bite the chicken and draw blood, but only one bat gained more than 5% of body mass. We were unable to reasonably compare their feeding performance with that of wild-born bats because only two of three wild-born, short-term captive bats fed on the chicken and none of the seven wild-born, long-term captive mothers attempted to feed. This unexpected lack of feeding might be due to a previously reported age-dependent neophobia. When six of the captive-born bats were released in the wild, they appeared to feed successfully because they survived for more than three consecutive nights. We suggest further tests that would better clarify the role of learning in the development of foraging in vampire bats.

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