Miniopterus magnater Sanborn 1931

Western Long-fingered Bat (Kelawar Jari Panjang Besar)

Specimen examined (1).— Monggis: TTU 108242 (GenBank EU521636) .

Type locality.— Papua New Guinea, E Sepik, Marienberg .

Malaysian distribution.—Recorded from Peninsular Malaysia (uncertain locality) and Borneo (Sabah: Gomantong Cave, Madai, Mt. Kinabalu, Poring,Tawau Hills, and upper Sungai Kuamut).

Remarks.— Miniopterus magnater was caught using a hand held mist net when it was hawking insects around lights near the Monggis station headquarters. Cranial measurements were used to identify this species (Hill 1983; Corbet and Hill 1992). Characters used to identify this species in the field are subtle and this species is usually confused with Miniopterus schrebersii (see Hendrichsen et al. 2001). Comparison with available GenBank sequences showed that this species aligned closely with M. schrebersii and M. magnater . A genetic distance of 0.7% in the cyt- b gene sequence variation was observed between our specimen and an individual from China (EF517308) available on Genbank.