An international team of biologists has described five new species of Vesper bats from Senegal.
Image of Nycticeinops schlieffenii which is represented by a new species in Senegal (© Natalie Weber, via www.inaturalist.org).
During seven expeditions to the Niokolo-Koba National Park in south-eastern Senegal, the biologists discovered that five species of bats looked similar to other populations in Africa, but differed significantly genetically from them.
They now working on describing formally the new species – Pipistrellus hesperidus, Nycticeinops schlieffenii, Scotoecus hirundo, Neoromicia nana and Neoromicia somalica. These species belong to the bat family Vespertilionidae, the largest family of bats with more than 400 known species.
The team studied 213 vespertilionid bats from Senegal and identified ten species, five of which were significantly genetically different from their nominate species.
Pipistrellus hesperidus (© B. Stanley / Fieldmuseum.org).
“The fact that these Senegalese bats are unrelated and are different to their cousins in other parts of Africa, suggests that West Africa may have been isolated in the past and formed a refugium, where populations gradually diverged and even acquired new chromosomal configurations,” said Dr Nancy Irwin from the University of York, UK, who is a second author of a paper published in the journal Frontiers in Zoology.
“This exciting finding confirms that West Africa may represent an underestimated bio-geographic hotspot with many more species to discover.”
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Bibliographic information: Darina Koubínová et al. 2013. Hidden diversity in Senegalese bats and associated findings in the systematics of the family Vespertilionidae. Frontiers in Zoology 10: 48; doi: 10.1186/1742-9994-10-48
