Leaf-nosed bat rounded tips, range in body size from 4 cm to 13.5 cm and a wingspans of up to 90 cm or more. Like other bats, leaf-nosed bats are nocturnal foragers that use echolocation to locate food sources, though the food sources they are locating vary between species. Many bats in family Phyllostomidae appear to have limited reliance on echolocation, likely because frugivorous bats do not need to quickly identify flying insects like many other bats. Instead, species of leaf-nosed fruit bats appear to use scent to identify their preferred food sources. When they are not foraging, leaf-nosed bats roost in
Animal echolocation recording their calls with ultrasonic recorders known as "bat detectors". However echolocation calls are not always species specific and some bats overlap in the type of calls they use so recordings of echolocation calls cannot be used to identify all bats. In recent years researchers in several countries have developed "bat call libraries" that contain recordings of local bat species that have been identified known as "reference calls" to assist with identification. Since the 1970s there has been an ongoing controversy among researchers as to whether bats use a form of processing known from radar termed coherent cross-correlation. Coherence means