{"doi":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123343","title":"Do greater spear-nosed bats have societies?","abstract":"Societies have been recognized in many animals but rarely used to describe social systems of bats. Here I discuss how the spatial and temporal relationships among greater spear-nosed bats, Phyllostomus hastatus, reflect societal features shared with other animal species in this special issue. These bats exhibit a social system in which one or more roosting groups of unrelated females or males occur within a cave or cave-like structure. The female members of a roosting group cooperate to defend young while often remaining together for a decade or more and can persist for multiple generations. A single male defends the group and monopolizes mating with them for up to 4 years. Females learn to match calls given during flight that are distinctive for their roosting group and use them to coordinate foraging trips. Females within a roosting group not only utilize shared space in a cave, in some populations, they also share foraging areas. While natal dispersal of both males and females, as occurs in greater spear-nosed bats, is unusual, other bat species likely exhibit some of these same societal features and warrant additional study. • A greater spear-nosed bat colony has features characteristic of an animal society. • A colony contains groups of unrelated females that roost together for many years. • Females within groups cooperate to rear pups and defend feeding sites. • Females use learned vocalizations to identify group and colony members. • Females learn where to find food from members of their group or colony.","journal":"Animal Behaviour","year":2025,"id":533011,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":3,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9543,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1119058,"name":"Gerald S. Wilkinson","orcid":"0000-0001-7799-8444","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":42,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:51:27.893975Z","pmid":"41953455","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}