Rhinolophus ferrumequinum (Schreber, 1774) —Greater Horseshoe Bat

Ƒespertilio ferrum-equinum Schreber, 1774 p.174; Type locality- Burgundy, France.

Rhinolophus nippon pachyodontus Kishida and Mori, 1931 p.379 (Nomen nudum).

R. quelpartis Mori, 1933 p.4; Type locality- Geumnyeong Cave, Jeju Island.

R. ferrumequinum korai Kuroda, 1938 p.91; Type locality- Suryun County, Gyeongsangbuk Province, Korea. Ellerman & Morrison-Scott, 1951 p.112; Won, 1967 p.302; Won, 1968 p.77; Yoon 1992 p.32; Yoon 2010 p.13.

R. ferrumequinum nippon: Tate, 1947 p.105; Corbet, 1978 p.43.

R. ferrumequinum: Ellerman & Morrison-Scott, 1951 p.111; Won, 1958 p.453; Won, 1967 p.302; Won, 1968 p.76; Corbet, 1978 p.42; Han, 1994 p.45; Won & Smith, 1999 p.11; Son, 2001 p.89; Yoon, 2004 p.47; Yoon, 2010 p.13.

R. ferrumequinum quelpartis: Ellerman & Morrison-Scott, 1951 p.112; Won, 1958 p.453; Won, 1967 p.305; Won, 1968 p.81; Yoon, 1992 p.34.

Range: Rhinolophus ferrumequinum commonly occurs throughout Korea, including remote islands (Yoon 2010; Fig. 17).

Remarks: Csorba et al. (2003) and Simmons (2005) identified seven subspecies. These included R. f. ferrumequinum in Europe and northwestern Africa; R. f. creticum in Crete; R. f. irani in Iraq, Iran and Turkmenia; R. f. proximus from Afghanistan and Uzbekistan east to Kashmir; R. f. tragatus from northern India to eastern China; R. f. korai in Korea; R. f. nippon in Japan and eastern China. Despite a lack of voucher specimens, two separate species were identified, R. ferrumequinum in the western Palearctic and R. nippon in the eastern Palearctic, based on high (21.6–24.5%) sequence divergence (Csorba et al. 2003). Benda and Vallo (2012) also supported the hypothesis of two distinct species by both morphology and mtDNA. However, based on cytochrome b gene analysis, Koh et al. (2014a) identified 4 clades, R. f. nippon from Japan, Korea, and northeastern China; east Chinese clade; central Chinese population; and a western Asian and European clade.

Although three subspecies, R. f. pachyodontus, R. f. korai, and R. f. quelpartis, have been reported, pachyodontus and korai were synonymized with R. f. quelpartis Mori, 1933 . The first reported the greater horseshoe bat population on the Korean Peninsula as R. nippon pachyodontus without any description of a specimen (Kishida & Mori 1931). Therefore, Kuroda (1938) treated R. n. pachyodontus as nomen nudum and proposed a new name, R. ferrumequinum korai . The greater horseshoe bat population on Jeju Island was first classified as a monotypic species, R. quelpartis Mori, 1933 (Yoon 2010) . Then, the taxon name was changed to R. ferrumequinum as the taxon R. f. quelpartis (Won 1967) . However, based on morphological and DNA analysis, Shim (1986) subsumed populations on Jeju Island and the Korean Peninsula into one subspecies. Although R. f. korai Kuroda, 1938 has been mostly used for Korean subspecies, the first name R. f. quelpartis Mori, 1933 has priority for populations in Korea since Kuroda (1938) requested the earlier name R. f. pachyodontus Kishida, 1931, to be a nomen nudum. However, Corbet (1978), Koopman (1994) and Koh et al. (2014a) considered both R. f. quelpartis and R. f. korai as synonyms of R. f. nippon .

Conservation status: Jeollanam Province and Gwangju Metropolitan City in South Korea have designated this bat as a provincially protected species.