Data from: Bats enhance their call identities to solve the cocktail party problem

Echolocating bats need to solve the problem of signal jamming by
conspecifics when they are in a group. However, while several mechanisms
have been suggested, it remains unclear how bats avoid confusion between
their own echoes and interfering sounds in a complex acoustic environment.
Here, we fixed on-board microphones onto individual frequency-modulating
bats flying in groups. We found that group members broaden the
inter-individual differences in the terminal frequencies of pulses,
thereby decreasing the similarity of pulses among individuals. To
understand what features most affect similarity between pulses, we
calculated the similarity of signals mimicking pulses. We found that the
similarity between those artificial signals was decreased most by
manipulation of terminal frequency. These results demonstrate that the
signal jamming problem is solved by this simple strategy, which may be
universally used by animals that use active sensing, such as echolocating
bats and electric fish, thereby transcending species and sensory
modalities.