关键词: 蝙蝠, 交流声波, 功能, 语言学, 发声学习

Abstract: Acoustic communication is a crucial phenotype for animals to maintain social stability, and it has always been a hotspot in the field of animal behavior research. Bats, as key group in ecosystems, primarily rely on acoustic signals to move around in environments and have long been model organisms for acoustic research. Here, we provide a comprehensive overview of communication calls in bats and propose future development directions. In general, bat communication calls exhibit diverse spectral structures, encode various information about individual identity, body size, or social status, and serve functions including defense and alarm, courtship and mating, and social bonding. Bats can adjust the structure, intensity, and complexity of their calls in response to noise interference. Bat communication calls exist geographic variation and possess syntactic structure, vocal rhythm, and complexity. Additionally, bats exhibit vocal learning and variability in sound development. Compared to echolocation calls, research on bat communication calls is relatively lacking. We recommend that future studies should focus on the multi-level evolutionary aspects of bat communication calls, innovate sound analysis methods, develop high-performance on-board sound recording devices, establish a global bat acoustic database, strengthen interdisciplinary collaborations, and conduct long-term systematic observations to advance the field of bat communication calls research.

Key words: Bats, Communication call, Function, Linguistics, Vocal learning