Data for: "Wild bats hunt insects faster under lit conditions by integrating acoustic and visual information"

Description

We examined whether bats use vision to enhance sensory redundancy when orienting and hunting small insects. We equipped 21 wild common noctule bats with high-resolution sensor loggers to measure their echolocation and movements when commuting and foraging in dark and lit environments. The experiments took place in Germany during summers of 2022 and 2023. While commuting, the bats maintained consistent echolocation sampling across light levels. When tracking prey in illuminated environments, bats emitted calls less frequently and with higher call levels compared with dark conditions. We have uploaded the data in tables and code to plot the main figures of the manuscript. Commuting flights: Repository_table 1+3: Wingbeat amplitude (m/s^2) and frequency (Hz) (Table 1) and call interval (seconds) (table 3) per 1 second commuting flights along with categorical explanatory variables Bat ID (21 individuals) and LightorDark (0 = dark, 1 = light). Repository_table 2: Wingbeat amplitude and frequency per 1 second foraging flights along with categorical explanatory variables Bat ID and LightorDark Repository_table 4: Call interval (ms), source levels (dB re 20µPa^2s) according to time before prey capture (s) along with categorical explanatory variables Bat ID and LightorDark Repository_table 5: Wingbeat frequency, amplitude and approach speed of the bat towards to the prey (m/s) along with categorical explanatory variables "Bat ID" and "LightorDark" and "Cluster": kmeans clustering (with 3 clusters) of call data according to the call intervals. Repository_table 6: 10 % darkest and 10 % lightest prey capture data with call intervals, call levels and time before prey captures according to "LightorDark", "BatID" and "Cluster". %% WavfilesExamples: Folder with examples of prey captures from the 10 % darkest and brightest environments.

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