Natures wonders: Bat wing sensors (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, May 06, 2015, 21:41 (3487 days ago) @ David Turell

Special sensors have developed in the skin of the bat wings to help with flight:-http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211124715003769-"The concordance between cortical response profiles to touch and air puffs indicate that these stimuli are processed by the same neuronal pathways in bats. Thus, although the peripheral organization of somatosensory inputs differs in bats and rodents, some cortical encoding mechanisms appear to be conserved. An intriguing question for future study is how these somatosensory signals are integrated with motor circuits to guide behaviors that underlie the bat's diverse repertoire of forelimb-dependent functions.-"Although the evolution of flight has proved to be an advantageous adaptation for Chiroptera, an open question is whether the wing's tactile receptors provide a selective advantage in flight. Chiroptera represents about 20% of all mammalian species, which provides rich material for comparing the behavioral consequences and functional organization of wing sensorimotor circuitry across species and ecological niches. Such future studies are needed to understand the evolutionary benefits of the bat wing's somatosensory specializations."