Social facilitation in short-tailed fruit bats, Carollia perspicillata (Linnaeus).

Group-living animals can potentially enhance their foraging performance and efficiency by obtaining information from others. Using PIT-tag data to study foraging behaviour in individual bats, we tested short-tailed fruit bats, Carollia perspicillata (Linnaeus), for evidence of local enhancement or social facilitation. To discriminate between these phenomena, we manipulated the presence of conspecifics while individuals searched for food. We quantified the time to find food and the order and sex of bats accessing the food, and any consistent associations between bats. Presence of conspecifics decreased the time needed to find food. We found no evidence that pairs of individuals consistently fed together; however, bats of the same sex tended to feed closer in time with one another. The same individuals consistently accessed the food first, and males found food more quickly than females. Our results provide evidence of social facilitation, with bats finding food more quickly in a group than alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]