DOI: 10.5061/dryad.7wm37pw4s
title: Maternal behavior influences vocal practice and learning processes in the greater sac-winged bat

description: Learning, particularly vocal learning, is often a social process. In human
 infants, it is well-established that social interactions influence speech
 acquisition and are hypothesized to modulate attentiveness and sensory
 processes, thereby affecting the speech-learning process. However, our
 understanding of how social interactions shape vocal ontogenetic processes
 in non-human mammals, particularly those which vocally learn, remains
 limited. In the bat Saccopteryx bilineata, pups acquire the adult vocal
 repertoire through a distinctive babbling behavior that shows interesting
 similarities to human infant babbling. While babbling encompasses many
 different syllable types, it is particularly noteworthy that pups learn
 song syllables by imitating adult singing males. The pups’ social
 environment involves frequent interactions with their mothers, whereas
 adult males mainly serve as the primary source of acoustic input. We
 monitored the vocal ontogeny of 19 wild pups of two populations,
 investigating whether their social environment (i.e. maternal influence,
 number of singing tutors) influenced three aspects of babbling: the amount
 of vocal practice, the pups’ final syllable repertoire size and the
 production of the syllable types acquired through vocal learning. The
 results demonstrate that maternal behavioral displays significantly
 influence the amount of vocal practice, the presence and versatility of
 song syllable types in babbling and the percentage of mature song
 syllables. Our findings show that maternal feedback plays a significant
 role in the vocal ontogeny and learning processes of S. bilineata, thus
 enhancing our understanding of the relationship between social feedback
 and vocal development in mammalian vocal learners. The shared files
 contain the raw data used for our analyses.
description: # Maternal behavior influences vocal practice and learning processes in
 the greater sac-winged bat Dataset DOI:
 [10.5061/dryad.7wm37pw4s](10.5061/dryad.7wm37pw4s) ## Description of the
 data and file structure **README file for “Maternal behavior influences
 vocal practice and learning processes in the greater sac-winged bat”**
 **Authors: Ahana A. Fernandez, Nora Serve, Sarah-Cecil Fabian, Mirjam
 Knörnschild** This README file describes the data files accompanying the
 above publication. Each file includes a Readme sheet with variable
 definitions. For any further queries please contact
 [fernandez.aurora.ahana@gmail.com](mailto:fernandez.aurora.ahana@gmail.com) **1.File name: Fernandez et al 2025_01_Focal pups_list_ontogenetic information.xlsx with 1 data sheet**\ File description: General information on the pups of the study. **2.File name: Fernandez et al 2025_02_Vocal practice_Repertoire size_Data.xlsx with 2 data sheets** **Excel sheet name: S1_Vocal practice**\ Excel sheet description: This data sheet contains the raw data to investigate the influence of the social environmental factors and pup age on the amount of vocal practice. Source data 1 (S1) for Figure 1D, Table 1A, and Table S2. **Excel sheet name: S2_Babb phase_Repe size**\ Excel sheet description: This data sheet contains the raw data to calculate the influence of social factors on the babbling phase duration and for calculating the correlations between social factors and the pup´s final repertoire size. Source data 2 (S2) for Figure 1E, Table 1B, Final repertoire size, additional data on *Maternal influence of the social environment on learned syllables *(supplementary material). **3.File name: Fernandez et al 2025_03_Learned syllables_Data.xlsx with 3 data sheets** **Excel sheet name: S3_Learned syllables**\ This data sheet contains the raw data to investigate the influence of the social environmental factors and pup age on the number of learned song syllables and versatility in babbling bouts. Source data (S3) for Figure 2B-C, Table 2A-B, *The influence of the social environment on learned syllables *(supplementary material).   **Excel sheet name: S4_Precursor-Mature syllables**\ This data sheet contains the raw data to investigate the influence of the social environmental factors and pup age on the amount of vocal practice. Source data (S4) for Figure 2D, Table 2C. **Excel sheet name: S5_supplements**\ This data sheet contains the raw data (S5) for the supplementary material *The influence of the social environment on learned syllables.* **4.File name: Fernandez et al 2025_04_Acoustic Data.xlsx with 2 data sheets** **Excel sheet name: S6_Acoustic raw data**\ The file contains the acoustic raw data for the calculation of the principal component and discriminant function analyses. The resulting Euclidean distances were used to calculate pup acoustic change. Source data (S6) for Figure 2E, Figure S4. **Excel sheet name: S7_Acoustic movement**\ This file contains the Euclidean distances to calculate the pup´s acoustic movement during ontogeny (in relation to maternal activity score). Source data (S7) for Figure 2E, Figure S4. ## Code/software Software to view my data: Microsoft office (Excel)\ For statistical analysis R-Studio and SPSS (not free version) were used.