I think the comments saying that this was already known, or obvious, are kinda missing the point.
It's always good to have some assumptions be experimentally verified, so we are all on the same page. Yes, echolocation plays a part, but (based on the abstract) this helps demonstrate that it's echolocation alone, i.e. it's not too affected when another sense is disrupted (for example smell). In other words, this checks if there's a bat-equivalent to the human "turning down the radio so you can see better" while parking a car.
For all we know, their maps could have linked to a secondary stimulus more tightly than we might have initially thought. Similar to how people might have difficulty remembering something until they do a second action, and it's the combination of these two actions (trying to remember + doing the second action) the actual trigger for remembering, instead of either action by itself. So isolating it to just echolocation is still worth verifying by itself.
The study also probably provides some specific data on conditions (of the bat, location, etc), distances, etc, to provide some upper or lower bounds on when the "exploratory actions" stop and the "memorized map" takes over, so we get an idea of approximate area size memorized (more data), stuff like that.
Imagine someone is doing a useless study like "Can humans feel pain on a body part they don't have?" with an obvious answer of "no of course not, that's BS", but going ahead anyway and discovering that phantom limbs and phantom pain are a thing (I don't know how this actually played out in history, I'm just trying to illustrate a point).
So TL;DR: the value of scientifically verifying "obvious" things is that, if things go as expected, you get specific data that can be used instead of assumptions; and if things don't go as expected, then that means the "obvious thing" wasn't so obvious after all.
I think the comments saying that this was already known, or obvious, are kinda missing the point.
It's always good to have some assumptions be experimentally verified, so we are all on the same page. Yes, echolocation plays a part, but (based on the abstract) this helps demonstrate that it's echolocation alone, i.e. it's not too affected when another sense is disrupted (for example smell). In other words, this checks if there's a bat-equivalent to the human "turning down the radio so you can see better" while parking a car.
For all we know, their maps could have linked to a secondary stimulus more tightly than we might have initially thought. Similar to how people might have difficulty remembering something until they do a second action, and it's the combination of these two actions (trying to remember + doing the second action) the actual trigger for remembering, instead of either action by itself. So isolating it to just echolocation is still worth verifying by itself.
The study also probably provides some specific data on conditions (of the bat, location, etc), distances, etc, to provide some upper or lower bounds on when the "exploratory actions" stop and the "memorized map" takes over, so we get an idea of approximate area size memorized (more data), stuff like that.
Imagine someone is doing a useless study like "Can humans feel pain on a body part they don't have?" with an obvious answer of "no of course not, that's BS", but going ahead anyway and discovering that phantom limbs and phantom pain are a thing (I don't know how this actually played out in history, I'm just trying to illustrate a point).
So TL;DR: the value of scientifically verifying "obvious" things is that, if things go as expected, you get specific data that can be used instead of assumptions; and if things don't go as expected, then that means the "obvious thing" wasn't so obvious after all.