First record of Myotis albescens (Chiroptera, Vespertilionidae) in French Guiana

Abstract

BackgroundMyotis albescens occurs from Mexico southward to Uruguay and Argentina. The species is known for all South American countries except French Guiana and Chile.New informationBased on one specimen recently collected in French Guiana we fill part of the gap in the distribution of the species in South America. Myotis albescens occurs in the Guiana Shield with other four congeners, from which it can be distinguished by external and skull traits. As an aid to future identifications, we provide a key to this assemblage.

Second capture of Promops centralis (Chiroptera) in French Guiana after 28 years of mist-netting and description of its echolocation and distress calls

“…Mist-net surveys have been intensively conducted in French Guiana since the 1990s, especially by Charles-Dominique et al (2001) and through numerous research projects (e.g. Thoisy et al 2014;Moratelli et al 2015;Catzeflis et al 2016;Lavergne et al 2016;Filippi-Codaccioni et al 2018). Yet it was only from 2011, with the advent of ACTA AMAZONICA bioacoustics, that P. centralis was registered again using bat detectors (e.g.…”

“…Harbouring a rich diversity of habitats, including the tropical Amazonian forest, French Guiana represents a hotspot of bat diversity. Currently, 106 bat species from nine families are listed in this county (Catzeflis et al 2013;Moratelli et al 2015;Rufray 2015). The advent of new techniques for surveying bats such as the use of bioacoustics is currently pushing forward our understanding of bat ecology and distribution (Britzke et al 2013;Gibb et al 2019), allowing the discovery of new species and opening ecological research questions and fields that were entirely inaccessible in the past.…”

SINE-Based Phylogenomics Reveal Extensive Introgression and Incomplete Lineage Sorting in Myotis

“…Several studies of Chiroptera using sequence information from relatively few loci have helped inform bat phylogenies across a broad taxonomic range [ 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 ]. A recent study of the genus Myotis sequenced full mitogenomes and thousands of UltraConserved Elements (UCEs; regions of high conservation across a wide range of mammalian taxa) and found that the evolutionary histories recovered with the two different data sources differed significantly ( Figure 1 ) [ 15 ].…”

Mammalian Diversity and Matses Ethnomammalogy in Amazonian Peru Part 4: Bats

“…Photographs by IDENTIFICATION: Myotis albescens is distinguished from other Neotropical Myotis by the following combination of characteristics: fur long and silky, dorsal pelage with frosted appearance due to pale-tipped hairs, fringe of hairs present along the trailing edge of uropatagium, sagittal crest absent, broad interorbital and postorbital constrictions, and a globular braincase (LaVal, 1973;Lopez-Gonzalez et al, 2001;Moratelli and de Oliveira, 2011). Descriptions and measurements of M. albescens were provided by Miller (1928), Husson (1962Husson ( , 1978, Quintela et al (2008), Braun et al (2009), Moratelli and de Oliveira (2011), and Moratelli et al (2013, 2015a. No subspecies are currently recognized (Braun et al, 2009), but analyses of molecular data (cytochrome b sequences) suggest the presence of at least four lineages that are >5 % divergent from each other (Larsen et al, 2012); the possibility that these mtDNA haplogroups represent cryptic taxa merits future testing with nuclear-gene sequences or phenotypic data.…”