Fruit-feeding behaviour and use of olfactory cues by the fruit batRousettus leschenaulti: an experimental study

This paper describes the feeding behaviour ofRousettus leschenaulti Desmarest, 1820 on lychees, the preferred cultivated food of this bat in captive conditions. We found that feeding comprised 25–30% of the total activity of these animals in a flight cage and that feeding durations were not significantly different between two sexes. To evaluate the role of odor and vision in foraging behaviour, we provided animals with artificial lychees, real lychees and artificial lychees soaked in the juice of real lychees and we recorded the number of feeding approaches to the different “fruit” types. The results indicated that bats approached real fruit significantly more than artificial fruit, and that the number of approaches to the soaked artificial fruit was also significantly higher than to the unsoaked artificial fruit. There were no significant differences between sexes in approach rates to any “fruit” type. We discuss the role of different sensory cues in the foraging behaviour of these bats and emphasize that the olfactory cue is important in detecting food resources and discriminating between different kinds of food items

Featuring heterogeneous composite of W-type hexagonal ferrite with 2D vanadium carbide MXene for wideband microwave absorption

In this study, W-type hexagonal ferrite BaCo1.2Zn0.8Fe16O27 (BCZF) was synthesized via solid-state sintering and V2CTx-MXene was chemically etched from its V2AlC MAX phase. Subsequently, BCZF and V2CTx composites were synthesized by hydrothermal integration of V2CTx on the surface of BCZF bonded by electrostatic forces at varying mass ratios. The extensive heterostructure interfacial morphology of two dimensional V2CTx and BCZF plays an explicit role in tuning the dielectric and magnetic loss characteristics of the synthesized composites. The dielectric-magnetic synergistic loss mechanism caused by interfacial polarization, strong multi-reflections, scattering between MXene multilayer structures, conduction loss, and magnetic resonance effectively optimized impedance matching to improve the attenuation ability of the synthesized composites. Remarkably, the BCZF@10%V2CTx composite achieved strong electromagnetic wave absorption ability with an effective absorption bandwidth (RL < −10 dB) of 8.0 GHz (10–18 GHz) which is superior to that of contemporary magnetic–dielectric hybrid composites. These results present a novel perspective on magnetic V2CTx-MXene composites for microwave absorption applications, and provide a basis for the design and development of high-performance cloaking materials