Acoustic Species Identification of Korean Myotis Bats (Chiroptera: Vespertilionidae)

Abstract

Abstract We investigated structure and intensity of 267 echolocation calls that were collected from the five Korean Myotisspecies (M. nettereri, M. petax, M. ikonnikovi, M. macrodactylus and M. formosus). All the Myotis species produced typical FM call pattern with similar echolocation call shapes and outer shapes, producing steep, downward frequency-modu-lated calls. A pulse has two harmonies, which consist of the first harmony with wider bandwidth and the second harmony with narrower bandwidth. The PF of the first harmony is higher than that of the second harmony. The typical FM call structure, with two harmonies and wide bandwidth, might be highly related to fast flying and wide screening in the dense forests. In classification of the echolocation calls by DFA, most of calls from the five species could be well correctly classified. All calls of M. nettereri (100% of 17 calls), M. formosus (95.5% of 22 calls) and M. ikonnikovi (85.7% of 70 calls) could be well discriminated from those of the other species, whereas calls of M. petax and M. macrodactylus could be discriminated by 70.4% of 98 calls and 76.7% of 60 calls, respectively. Our results indicate that the five Korean Myotis species can be well identified by the echolocation calls with high correct classification by DFA.Key Words: Myotis, echolocation call, vespertilionidae, bat, FM call