When bats are boxing: aggressive behaviour and communication in male Seba's short-tailed fruit bat

摘要: Aggressive behaviours have an important impact on the social organization of animals and status individuals, especially in gregarious species. Agonistic interactions between territory holders are essential to set reinforce territorial borders. Additionally, agonistic displays used demonstrate ownership a site may indicate signaller. Between neighbouring owners, dynamic borders require frequent interactions. In daily repeated aggressive encounters, ritualization can help avoid need for serious fights their costly consequences. bat Carollia perspicillata, frugivore with resource defence polygyny, males defend territories at valuable roosting sites females. Working captive colony about 400 housed under seminatural conditions tropical zoo, we found that defended aggressively by use succession forming ritualized structure. Simultaneously, three different vocalization types during displays, namely down-sweeps, warbles trills. A statistical analysis 58 trills from five adult showed they contained sufficient variation encode individual signature. Using habituation–dishabituation paradigm playback experiment, could discriminate vocalizing based calls alone. Such discrimination is probably useful distinguishing owners more unfamiliar intruders, thus allows economical response.