Data from: Consistent long-distance foraging flights across years and seasons at colony level in a neotropical bat [2021-2022]

All foraging animals face a trade-off: how much time should they invest in exploitation of known resources versus exploration to discover new resources? For group-living central place foragers, this balance is challenging. Due to the nature of their movement patterns, exploration and exploitation are often mutually exclusive, while the availability of social information may discourage individuals from exploring. To examine these trade-offs, we GPS-tracked groups of greater spear-nosed bats (Phyllostomus hastatus) from three colonies on Isla Colón, Panamá. During the dry season, when these omnivores forage on the nectar of unpredictable balsa flowers, bats consistently travelled long distances to remote, colony- specific foraging areas, bypassing flowering trees closer to their roosts. They continued using these areas in the wet season, when feeding on a diverse, presumably ubiquitous diet, but also visited other, similarly distant foraging areas. Foraging areas were shared within but not always between colonies. Our longitudinal dataset suggests that bats from each colony invest in long-distance commutes to socially learned shared foraging areas, bypassing other available food patches. Rather than exploring nearby resources, these bats exploit colony-specific foraging locations that appear to be culturally transmitted. These results give insight into how social animals might diverge from optimal foraging.

所有觅食动物均面临一项权衡决策：应投入多少时间开发已知食物资源，又应分配多少时间用于探索以发现新的食物来源？对于群居中心地觅食者（central place foragers）而言，达成这一平衡颇具难度。受其运动模式的特性影响，探索与开发往往相互排斥；而社会信息的可获取性，可能会抑制个体的探索行为。为探究这类权衡问题，我们对巴拿马科隆岛3个种群的大矛鼻蝠（Phyllostomus hastatus）群体开展了GPS追踪。旱季时，这类杂食性动物以分布难以预测的轻木花花蜜为食，此时蝙蝠会持续长途飞行至偏远且种群专属的觅食区域，绕行距离栖息地更近的开花林木。进入雨季，它们的食物种类多样且分布广泛，此时蝙蝠仍会持续使用这些觅食区域，但同时也会造访其他距离相近的觅食位点。觅食区域可在种群内部共享，但种群之间并非总能实现共享。我们的纵向数据集显示，每个种群的蝙蝠均会通过长途通勤，前往通过社会学习获得的共享觅食区域，而绕行其他可获取的食物斑块。这些蝙蝠并未探索附近的食物资源，而是利用了看似经文化传承的种群专属觅食位点。本研究结果揭示了群居动物可能如何偏离最优觅食策略。