Morphological diversity in the sensory system of phyllostomid bats: implications for acoustic and dietary ecology

1. Sensory systems perform fitness-relevant functions, and specialized sensory structures allow organisms to accomplish challenging tasks. However, broad comparative analyses of sensory morphologies and their performance are lacking for diverse mammalian radiations.
2. Neotropical leaf-nosed bats (Phyllostomidae) are one of the most ecologically diverse mammal groups; including a wide range of diets and foraging behaviors, and extreme morphological variation in external sensory structures used in echolocation (nose leaf and pinnae).
3. We coupled 3D geometric morphometrics and acoustic field recordings under a phylogenetic framework to investigate the mechanisms underlying the diversification of external sensory morphologies in phyllostomids, and explored the potential implications of sensory morphological diversity to functional outputs and dietary ecology.
4. We found that the nose leaf consists of two evolutionary modules, spear and horseshoe, suggesting that modularity enabled morph...

1. 感官系统承担与进化适合度相关的功能，特化的感官结构使生物体得以完成极具挑战性的任务。然而，针对多样哺乳动物进化辐射类群的感官形态及其功能表现的广泛比较分析仍较为匮乏。
2. 新热带叶鼻蝠（Neotropical leaf-nosed bats, Phyllostomidae，叶口蝠科）是生态多样性最高的哺乳动物类群之一；其食性与觅食行为跨度极广，且用于回声定位的外部感官结构（鼻叶与耳廓）存在极端的形态变异。
3. 我们将三维几何形态测量学（3D geometric morphometrics）与系统发育框架下的野外声学录音相结合，以探究叶口蝠科外部感官形态多样化的潜在机制，并探讨感官形态多样性对功能输出与食性生态的潜在影响。
4. 我们发现鼻叶由两个进化模块构成：矛状叶与马蹄叶，这表明模块化特征推动了形态...