Rhinolophus fumigatus Rüppell, 1842

Cakenberghe, Victor Van, Tungaluna, Guy-Crispin Gembu, Akawa, Prescott Musaba, Seamark, Ernest & Verheyen, Erik, 2017, The bats of the Congo and of Rwanda and Burundi revisited (Mammalia: Chiroptera), European Journal of Taxonomy 382 (382), pp. 1-327 : 38

Rhinolophus fumigatus Rüppell, 1842

Fig. 15 E–F

* Rhinolophus fumigatus Rüppell, 1842: 132 .

In their synonymy list for R. fumigatus, Hayman et al. (1966: 38) include Rhinolophus abae J.A. Allen, 1917 , and they refer to Koopman, who considered abae to be very close to fumigatus at the species level and indicated that abae might only be a subspecies of fumigatus . The records for these two taxa were grouped together in the text, but they still provided two separate maps: 36 for R. abae and 40 for R. fumigatus . These maps indicate that the two taxa occur in the northeastern RDC. Further fumigatus records were reported from Rwanda and the southern provinces of Tanganyika, Lualaba and Haut- Katanga. Hayman et al. (1966) also reported a series from 74 km on the Banana-Boma Road (RMCA 20649, 20651 to 20653), but these were re-identified as Rhinolophus lobatus (= R. landeri ; Wim Wendelen, pers. comm.). However, two other R. fumigatus specimens have surfaced from the Kongo Central Province (Thysville: RBINS 22428 and 22429). Cotterill & Happold (2013a: 330) indicate that R. fumigatus inhabits savanna areas (miombo and mopane woodlands in south-central Africa). Their distribution map shows a patchy covering of sub-Saharan Africa consisting of a number of red areas in West Africa, northeast Africa (including NE DRC, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia), and southwestern Africa ( Angola and Namibia) as well as a number of individual records in southeastern Africa ( Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique). From the data in ACR (2016) we know that the distribution in southern Africa is more extensive than Cotterill & Happold’s map suggests, and this probably might also be the case in West Africa. As such, our distribution map is more extensive, indicating that R. fumigatus occurs over the major part of sub-Saharan Africa, with the exception of the coastal areas in West Africa, the Central African forest region and extreme southern Africa.

Figures

Fig. 15. Distribution maps. A–B. Rhinolophus clivosus Cretzschmar, 1826. C–D. Rhinolophus eloquens K. Andersen, 1905. E–F. Rhinolophus fumigatus Rüppell, 1842. A, C, E. Distribution in the CRB area. B, D, F. Pan-African distribution.