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Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology

02-04-2024 | Review

Echolocating Bats Have Evolved Decreased Susceptibility to Noise-Induced Temporary Hearing Losses

Authors: Andrea Megela Simmons, James A. Simmons

Published in: Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology

Abstract

Glenis Long championed the application of quantitative psychophysical methods to understand comparative hearing abilities across species. She contributed the first psychophysical studies of absolute and masked hearing sensitivities in an auditory specialist, the echolocating horseshoe bat. Her data demonstrated that this bat has hyperacute frequency discrimination in the 83-kHz range of its echolocation broadcast. This specialization facilitates the bat’s use of Doppler shift compensation to separate echoes of fluttering insects from concurrent echoes of non-moving objects. In this review, we discuss another specialization for hearing in a species of echolocating bat that contributes to perception of echoes within a complex auditory scene. Psychophysical and behavioral studies with big brown bats show that exposures to long duration, intense wideband or narrowband ultrasonic noise do not induce significant increases in their thresholds to echoes and do not impair their ability to orient through a naturalistic sonar scene containing multiple distracting echoes. Thresholds of auditory brainstem responses also remain low after intense noise exposures. These data indicate that big brown bats are not susceptible to temporary threshold shifts as measured in comparable paradigms used with other mammals, at least within the range of stimulus parameters that have been tested so far. We hypothesize that echolocating bats have evolved a decreased susceptibility to noise-induced hearing losses as a specialization for echolocation in noisy environments.

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Title: Echolocating Bats Have Evolved Decreased Susceptibility to Noise-Induced Temporary Hearing Losses
Authors: Andrea Megela Simmons
James A. Simmons
Publication date: 02-04-2024
Publisher: Springer US
Published in: Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology
Print ISSN: 1525-3961
Electronic ISSN: 1438-7573
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10162-024-00941-6

At a glance: The STEP trials

Springer Medicine

Echolocating Bats Have Evolved Decreased Susceptibility to Noise-Induced Temporary Hearing Losses

Abstract

At a glance: The STEP trials

Springer Medicine

Abstract

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