Greater Japanese horseshoe bats gradually converge on a shared echolocation frequency after unfamiliar individuals join a colony. Instead of separating their signals into individual channels, lower-frequency bats shift upward until colony members preserve a common clutter-free band in which echoes from fluttering prey remain detectable.
The asymmetric adjustment produces a colony-level sensing advantage without a central coordinator. Individuals alter their own calls in response to the acoustic environment, and the resulting convergence maintains a shared silent spectral window for the group.
https://phys.org/news/2026-07-noise-horseshoe-echolocation-behavior-colonies.html
