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[08/2021] New paper out in iScience with the great team from Bioacoustics Aarhus: Wild bats briefly decouple sound production from wingbeats to increase sensory flow during prey captures

[06/2021] Holger receives a 5-year DFG Heisenberg Fellowship and a DFG research grant for two PhD students, to investigate interspecific acoustic communication networks and sensory-behavioural algorithms in predator-prey-interactions.

[06/2021] Congratulations Dr. Thejasvi Beleyur! Thejasvi has successfully defended his PhD thesis on "Theoretical and empirical investigation of echolocation in bat groups". And congrats for receiving funding to continue this work as PostDoc in collaboration with Iain Couzin and the Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour in Konstanz.

[03/2021] Out in Mammal Review: the limits of acoustic monitoring of bats at wind turbines, and how to improve it. Summarized in this science communication animation.

[03/2021] Hot off the press in Science Advances with amazing colleagues from Bioacoustics Aarhus: Miniature tags reveal how free-flying hunting bats adjust both echolocation and flight to perceptually zoom-in on prey echoes and to reject background echoes.

[01/2021] Daniel's new paper is now out in J Exp Biol, showing task-dependent vocal adjustments in barbastelle bats across four different tasks of varying sensory-motor difficulty.

[01/2021] Two new papers accepted with international colleagues, on bioacoustic monitoring of bats at wind facilities (Mammal Review), and on biologging the sensory input of free-flying wild bats during foraging (Science Advances).

[12/2021] Dylan's new paper is now out in PeerJ, showing that only some bats can cope with noise-induced masking and distraction.

[11/2020] Two new papers accepted, congrats to Daniel and Dylan! More details on "task-dependent vocal adjustments" and on "coping with noise" soon to come in J Exp Biol and in PeerJ.

[11/2020] Our new paper and Theresa’s blog post in Ecology & Evolution: we suggest that light pollution suppresses both types of evasive flight in moths, making them easy prey for bats.

[07/2020] Very excited that Leonie Baier is joining us again, together with Eva Mardus! Welcome to both! Together, we will compare flight and echolocation behaviour in hearing-impaired and normal-hearing bats.

[06/2020] Our research is featured in the upcoming issue of MaxPlanckResearch and with an interview of Holger in the “Forschungsquartett” about sound on detektor.fm, the weekly podcast of the Max Planck Society.

[06/2020] Big congrats to Dr. Theresa Hügel, who has successfully defended her PhD thesis on “The sensory biology of evasive flight in eared moths”!

[02/2020] Congrats, Léna, for successfully defending her MSc-thesis on the effects of the daily variation in atmospheric conditions on echolocation call parameters!

[12/2019] Out now in PNAS: Modeling active sensing reveals echo detection even in large groups of bats, despite all the loud masking calls of neighbouring bats. Bats detect mostly echoes of their closest and frontal neighbours. This spatial limitation might be beneficial for following their neighbours during emergence.

[11/2019] Out now in J Theor Biol: Neural representation of bat predation risk and evasive flight in moths: a modelling approach. Combining empirical neuronal data of 12 moth species and flight path modelling of the sympatric community of those moths and their 14 predatory bat species, we show that even simple ears can solve complex problems.

[11/2019] Goodbye Aiqing! Aiqing Lin returned to his lab at the Northeast Normal University, China, after spending one year with us as Visiting Scholar.

[11/2019] Just accepted: Two papers, in which we modelled echo detection and auditory interactions in large bat swarms (Beleyur & Goerlitz, PNAS), and the evasive flight of eared moths based on auditory neuronal activity (Goerlitz et al, J Theor Biol)!

[10/2019] Just published in Global Ecology and Conservation: "Supposedly bat-friendly light colours like amber and red have negative effects on multiple bat species in caves and during emergence."

[10/2019] Our paper on Social Information Transfer featured as "In Focus" Article and on the Cover of the Journal of Animal Ecology.

[09/2019] Goodbye Daniel! Daniel started a new position at the Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research after his PostDoc with us (watch out for those papers to come!). All the best, and see you soon!

[07/2019] Holger presented the group's research with invited lectures at the yearly meeting of Emmy Noether grantees and at the open door day of Castle Ringberg of the Max Planck Society.

[07/2019] Theresa's new study is out in Functional Ecology, showing that moth species perform species-specific escape flights in response to the same simulated bat attack. This variability increases the population-wide unpredictability, likely protecting moths further against their predators. Also see our press release.

[06/2019] Just published: Our research in the Research Highlights of the Yearbook 2018. Holger Goerlitz’s report about predator-prey-interactions for the Max Planck Yearbook 2018 was chosen as one of the 15 Highlights of the Max Planck Society 2018.

[06/2019] Holger R. Goerlitz received a new grant of the Emmy Noether program to continue for another year his research into the sensory strategies underlying predator-prey-interactions. This project will focus on prey selection strategies of echolocating bats, and predator-defence strategies of conspicuously singing male bushcrickets.

[04/2019] Three new papers out this week! Leonie's last PhD chapter shows that echolocation uses similar cues as vision for spatial feature analysis (iScience). Daniel's extensive field work reveals ubiquitous information transfer among insectivorous bat species (J Anim Ecol). And lastly a robust method for the self-calibration of microphone arrays based on a single sound playback by our colleagues in Lund (IEEE Xplore).

[03/2019] Welcome to Léna de Framond-Benard, starting her MSc thesis on dynamic adaptive echolocation in response to environmental changes. And goodbye to Paula Iturralde-Pólit, heading back to Costa Rica for field work!

[12/2018] Welcome back Toni Hubancheva! Toni is back from Bulgaria to analyse data of the last field season, conduct further experiments, and prepare the next field season. A busy winter before she will be heading back to our field station!

[11/2018] Welcome to Dr. Aiqing Lin, visiting us for one year from the Northeast Normal University, China.

[11/2018] Resource ephemerality drives social foraging in five species of bats: Our new paper by Egert-Berg, Hurme, Greif and an excellent international team driven by Yossi Yovel's lab, is out in Current Biology.

[10/2018] Welcome back Paula Iturralde-Pólit from Gloriana Chaverri's lab! Paula joins us again to analyse bat flight trajectories and call levels.

[09/2018] Welcome Neetash Mysuru, helping us to analyse the flight and echolocation behaviour of horseshoe bat aggregations.

[09/2018] September marks the end of a busy field season. Everyone's back in the lab now, and multiple papers are in preparation for the coming months.

[07/2018] Congratulations to Thejasvi for winning one year of funding from the DAAD!

[03/2018] Many news this month, too: three new papers!

• Lewanzik & Goerlitz out in Functional Ecology on stealth echolocation and amplitude reduction during prey approach in barbastelle bats. Links to paper, plain-language summary, and press release.
• Lattenkamp et al out in J Exp Biol on beam steering towards passive acoustic environmental cues in Greater horseshoe bats. Link to authors' version of the paper.
• Goerlitz accepted in Ecology and Evolution on the effects of call frequency and weather condition and their variation on atmospheric attenuation of sound, and how this limits the analysis of acoustic parameters.

[01/2018] A great busy start to the year:

• Toni joins us for three months on a DAAD stipend, working her in the lab instead of in the field in Bulgaria. Welcome!
• Claire Hermans also joins for five months, to learn acoustic (tracking) methods and to conduct an extensive calibration of our acoustic localisation system. Welcome!
• And welcome to Eryn Chang, preparing for her MSc field work in Thailand (with Sara Bumrungsri) on the sexual dimorphism in call frequency of acuminate horseshoe bats.
• The German Bat Research Meeting took place again. Holger presented an invited plenary lecture, Daniel and Thejasvi gave talks, and Theresa, Toni and Verena presented posters. See you again in January 2020, organised by us and the groups of Lutz Wiegrebe and Uwe Firzlaff.

[11/2017] Welcome Paula Iturralde! Paula joins us from the Gloriana Chaverri's lab at the Universidad de Costa Rica for two months to learn all about acoustic tracking of bats. 

[10/2017] New paper out: Theresa's MSc thesis, together with work by Vincent and Amanda, now published in Behavioural Ecology and Sociobiology: Interspecific information transfer takes place between bat species based on echolocation calls, but it depends on call shape, foraging ecology, context, and very likely feeding buzz density. Extensive details in the discussion. #openaccess.

[09/2017] Congrats to Daniel for defending this PhD thesis at IZW Berlin and FU Berlin. Well done, Dr. Lewanzik!

[07/2017] Goodby to Erin Gillam, now back home to NDSU! It was so great having you! And as well, goodbye to Klemen Koselj, now at Ljublijana University! We'll stay in touch.

[05/2017] Samuel Kaiser succesfully defended his MSc thesis on thermoperception in Phyllostomus discolor. Well done! Now he's off to work with Gerry Carter at STRI in Panama.

[04/2017] Welcome to Verena Reininger from the University of Potsdam, who started her MSc research, investigating how changing weather conditions and atmospheric attenuation influence echolocation in multiple bat species.

[02/2017] Welcome Antoniya Hubancheva, who joined our group for her PhD on predator-prey-interactions between Myotis bats and katydids. Toni is based both at the Bulgarian Academy of Science, supervised by Dragan Chobanov, and at the MPIO.

[09/2016] A warm welcome to Prof. Erin Gillam from North Dakota State University, USA, and to Samuel Kaiser (hello again)! Erin joins us for a year during her sabbatical, and Samuel has started his MSc thesis.

[08/2016] Kate Morozova succesfully submitted her MSc thesis on dominance hierarchy and individual recognition in Phyllostomus discolor. Congrats!

[12/2015] Jinhong's new paper just came out in Scientific Reports! Nice Christmas gift, and a Happy New Year to all!

[10/2015] Kate Morozova and Samuel Kaiser joined the group for MSc research trainings. Welcome!

[09/2015] Thejasvi Beleyur has started his PhD work, funded by the DAAD, to investigate vocal and flight behaviour in bat aggregations. And Dylan Gomes has started his research on the effect of noise on bats, funded throught the Fulbright Commission. Welcome to both! 

[08/2015] Jinhong Luo has successfully defended his PhD thesis! And so has Ella Lattenkamp her MSc thesis. Congratulations, well done! And Ella won one of the runners-up poster prizes at this year's IBAC conference.

[07/2015] Rožle Kaučič left us again to continue his MSc studies in Slowenia. Thanks for all your help! And Amanda Munoz Pohlman joined us for her MSc research training, working on heterospecific recognition in wild bats at our field station in Bulgaria. Welcome!

[03/2015] Ella Lattenkamp and Rožle Kaučič joined our group as MSc Student and ERASMUS exchange student. Welcome!

[11/2014 - 03/2015] Elisavat Za from the EES Graduate School worked with us on bat buzzes. Thanks!

[19.09.2014] Theresa won a price for an "Oustanding Master Thesis" by the Julius-Maximilians-University Würzburg, for her MSc thesis on heterospecific interactions in bats. Congratulations!

[18.09.2014] Congratulations to Jinhong, who received a 2014 Best Student Paper Award by the IMPRS for Organismal Biology for his paper on the effects of global warming on biosonar. 

[15.09.2014] The Deutschlandfunk featured our work on stealth echolocation, the way how the barbastelle bat is able to catch moths with ears [in German]

[12.09.2013] Holger talked about "Auditory interactions in the night sky: from neurons to ensembles" as invited section speaker at the 107th Meeting of the German Zoological Society.

[01.09.2014] Theresa Hügel started her PhD work today, after conducting her MSc thesis last year with us in the Sensory Ecology Group. Welcome Theresa!

[01.05.2014] Welcome Daniel Lewanzik, who joined us from the IZW in Berlin as Postdoc!

[01.03.2014] The Acoustic and Functional Ecology Group has officially started, funded by a 5 year Emmy Noether award of the German Research Foundation (DFG). The group’s research focuses on the mechanisms, ecology and evolution of sensory perception and auditory-guided behaviour, using echolocating bats and eared moths as model systems.