Publications by authors named "Reut Assa"

Echolocating bats rely on active acoustic sensing to perceive their environment. When multiple bats fly together, echolocating simultaneously, the calls emitted by nearby conspecifics could interfere with and mask the echoes necessary for orientation. Nowhere is this impairment of sensing more dramatic than when thousands of bats emerge from a cave at the same time.

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Air pollution is one of the world's most substantial environmental problems. Air pollution is more severe in urban environments. Besides humans, other animals also inhabit cities.

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Background: Urbanization is rapidly altering our ecosystem. While most wild species refrain from entering urban habitats, some flourish in cities and adapt to the new opportunities these offer. Urban individuals of various species have been shown to differ in physiology, morphology, and behavior compared to their rural counterparts.

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Animal species have evolved to enhance their survival by focusing their temporal activity on specific parts of the diurnal-nocturnal cycle. Various factors, including inter-specific competition and anti-predator behavior, as well as anthropogenic effects like light pollution, have prompted some species to expand or shift their temporal niches. Our study focuses on the temporal niche shift of the Egyptian fruit bat () to diurnal activity in Israel.

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Bats rely on echolocation for operating in dim light or dark conditions. Accordingly, most research on echolocation is performed under dark conditions with a few exceptions. Bat species that emerge to forage before sunset have been shown to use echolocation even in relatively high light levels.

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