Adjusting to Uncertainty: Unraveling Behavior in a Disturbed Environment

Environmental changes driven by human activity and climate change have become increasingly frequent and extreme in recent decades. These unpredictable conditions challenge animals’ ability to survive, forcing them to adjust their behavior and demonstrate cognitive flexibility. Advanced cognitive abilities and sociality can help animals cope with such uncertainty: cognitive skills enable flexible decision-making in dynamic environments, while social living can buffer stress by reducing predation risk, facilitating information sharing, and aiding thermoregulation. However, disturbances and extreme weather may impair cognition, elevate stress levels, and reduce sleep, ultimately compromising key behaviors such as navigation and foraging, and reducing survival. Despite the ecological importance of these dynamics, most of our knowledge about animal decision-making comes from controlled laboratory experiments, which often fail to capture the complexity of natural environments.
I examine these questions in bats, one of the most social mammals, known for their advanced cognitive abilities and sensitivity to environmental disturbances. In my talk, I will present previous work that highlights the remarkable cognitive skills bats demonstrate and introduce my current research, which employs innovative remote sensing technologies and AI-based tracking tools to continuously monitor their behavior in the wild. By combining long-term observational data with targeted field manipulations, I aim to uncover the interplay between cognition, learning, and sociality in the face of increasing environmental disturbances experienced by animals in their natural habitats.