Standards for recording echolocation signals and building reference libraries of bats in Colombia

Abstract

Bioacoustic tools allow monitoring bats usually not detected with traditional methods, such as mist nets, and also provide information about different biological aspects of the species. The interest in applying these methods has increased in the last years, and consequently, there has been a rapid development of ultrasonic recording equipment and analysis tools. However, in the Neotropics, bat bioacoustics is emerging in some countries and just appearing in others; therefore it is necessary to reinforce this field to study the high taxonomic and functional diversity of the region. Therefore, it is essential to have bat call libraries that serve as a reference to validate and compare recordings from different species and localities. Some countries in the Neotropics have advanced in this process and are already building these reference libraries. In Colombia, the future work is challenging, due to the more than 200 bat species present. This paper establishes the methodological basis to obtain bat-reference calls in Colombia and allow those who are just starting out in this research field.

Keywords

• bioacoustic methods
• chiroptera
• echolocation
• recording methods
• reference libraries