Data from: Insectivorous bats integrate social information about species identity, conspecific activity, and prey abundance to estimate cost-benefit ratio of interactions

Animals can use inadvertent social information to improve fitness‐relevant
decisions, for instance about where to forage or with whom to interact.
Since bats emit high‐amplitude species‐specific echolocation calls when
flying, they provide a constant flow of inadvertent social information to
others who can decode that acoustic information. Of particular interest is
the rate of feeding buzzes – characteristic call sequences preceding any
prey capture – which correlates with insect abundance. Previous studies
investigating eavesdropping in bats yielded very different and in part
contradictory results likely because they commonly focused on single
species only, differed substantially in playback buzz rate, and did
usually not account for (baseline) conspecific activity. Our goal was to
overcome these limitations and systematically test which inadvertent
social information bats integrate when eavesdropping on others and how
this integration affects space‐use and both intra‐ and interspecific
interactions, respectively. We used a community‐wide approach and
investigated the effects of a broad range of playback feeding buzz rates
and conspecific activity on eavesdropping responses in 24 bat species
combinations in the wild. For the first time, we reveal that finely graded
and density‐dependent eavesdropping responses are not limited to
particular foraging styles or call types, but instead are ubiquitous among
insectivorous bats. All bats integrated social information about calling
species identity, prey abundance, and conspecific activity to estimate the
cost‐benefit ratio of prospective interactions, yet in a species‐specific
manner. The effect of buzz rate was multifaceted, as bats responded
differently to different buzz rates and responses were additionally
modulated by heterospecific recognition. Conspecific activity, in
contrast, had a negative effect on the eavesdropping responses of all
bats. These findings can explain the inconsistent results of previous
studies and advance our understanding of the complex nature of con‐ and
heterospecific interactions within bat communities. A comprehensive
understanding of how bats incorporate social information into their
decision‐making will help researchers to explain species distribution
patterns and eventually to unravel mechanisms of species coexistence.