随着蝙蝠前往小型的种群栖息，或是在冬季独自过冬，由几十名成员构成的蝙蝠种群在一年内要经历许多次的分离与重组。然而研究人员发现，像人类和大象一样，雌蝙蝠却会在很长的时期内组成一些彼此扶持的小团队。在日前发表于英国《皇家学会学报B卷》上的一项研究中，研究人员用数据集录器标记了两个种群的蝙蝠，并且在5年的时间里追踪了它们的筑巢行为。他们发现，待在一起的并非只是家庭成员；一个网络分析表明，这些“女孩俱乐部”是由来自许多不同种系以及年龄段的蝙蝠构成的。（雄蝙蝠总是独栖的。）研究人员提出，蝙蝠社会可能受益于合作行为，例如梳理和交流，与你的女友干这些事总是很有趣。（生物谷Bioon.com）
生物谷推荐原文出处：
Proc. R. Soc. B doi: 10.1098/rspb.2010.2718
Bats are able to maintain long-term social relationships despite the high fission–fusion dynamics of their groups
Gerald Kerth1,2,3,*?, Nicolas Perony4,? and Frank Schweitzer4
Abstract
Elephants, dolphins, as well as some carnivores and primates maintain social links despite their frequent splitting and merging in groups of variable composition, a phenomenon known as fission–fusion. Information on the dynamics of social links and interactions among individuals is of high importance to the understanding of the evolution of animal sociality, including that of humans. However, detailed long-term data on such dynamics in wild mammals with fully known demography and kin structures are scarce. Applying a weighted network analysis on 20 500 individual roosting observations over 5 years, we show that in two wild Bechstein's bat colonies with high fission–fusion dynamics, individuals of different age, size, reproductive status and relatedness maintain long-term social relationships. In the larger colony, we detected two stable subunits, each comprising bats from several family lineages. Links between these subunits were mainly maintained by older bats and persisted over all years. Moreover, we show that the full details of the social structure become apparent only when large datasets are used. The stable multi-level social structures in Bechstein's bat colonies resemble that of elephants, dolphins and some primates. Our findings thus may shed new light on the link between social complexity and social cognition in mammals.
