Social foraging in vampire bats is predicted by long-term cooperative relationships

PLoS Biol. 2021 Sep 23;19(9):e3001366. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3001366. eCollection 2021 Sep.

Abstract

Stable social bonds in group-living animals can provide greater access to food. A striking example is that female vampire bats often regurgitate blood to socially bonded kin and nonkin that failed in their nightly hunt. Food-sharing relationships form via preferred associations and social grooming within roosts. However, it remains unclear whether these cooperative relationships extend beyond the roost. To evaluate if long-term cooperative relationships in vampire bats play a role in foraging, we tested if foraging encounters measured by proximity sensors could be explained by wild roosting proximity, kinship, or rates of co-feeding, social grooming, and food sharing during 21 months in captivity. We assessed evidence for 6 hypothetical scenarios of social foraging, ranging from individual to collective hunting. We found that closely bonded female vampire bats departed their roost separately, but often reunited far outside the roost. Repeating foraging encounters were predicted by within-roost association and histories of cooperation in captivity, even when accounting for kinship. Foraging bats demonstrated both affiliative and competitive interactions with different social calls linked to each interaction type. We suggest that social foraging could have implications for social evolution if "local" within-roost cooperation and "global" outside-roost competition enhances fitness interdependence between frequent roostmates.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Appetitive Behavior*
  • Cattle
  • Chiroptera / physiology*
  • Cooperative Behavior*
  • Feeding Behavior
  • Female
  • Social Behavior
  • Vocalization, Animal

Associated data

  • figshare/10.6084/m9.figshare.14529588.v2

Grants and funding

This study was funded by grants of the National Science Foundation (Integrative Organismal Systems #2015928; GGC; https://www.nsf.org/), of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (https://www.dfg.de/) within the research unit FOR-1508, a Smithsonian Scholarly Studies Awards grant (GGC, SPR; https://www.si.edu/), and a National Geographic Society Research Grant WW-057R-17 (GGC; https://www.nationalgeographic.com/). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.