Scotophilus dinganii (A. Smith, 1833)

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 : 80

Scotophilus dinganii (A. Smith, 1833)

Fig. 36 E–F

Vespertilio Dinganii A. Smith, 1833: 59 .

* Scotophilus nigrita (Schreber, 1775) : 58.

* Scotophilus nigrita herero Thomas, 1906: 174 .

As indicated below, S. nigrita was erroneously used to identify the medium-sized African Scotophilus species. Robbins (1978: 212) showed that the correct name for this species should be S. dinganii .

Hayman et al. (1966: 57, map 83) reported “ S. nigrita ” from over almost the entire DRC and from northern Rwanda, with the exception of the northwestern part of the DRC and the most central part. Here, we include additional specimens from the northwestern, southwestern and southeastern parts of the country as well as from Rwanda and Burundi. This still leaves the central part of the DRC unoccupied by this species. The only central DRC record is a specimen from Boende (Tshuapa Province), but this is a juvenile specimen, which is probably too young to be identified with certainty.

Furthermore, we removed a number of localities from the northeastern part of the DRC as the underlying specimens belonged to the next species.

Happold (2013 am: 674) based her distribution map on data from Robbins et al. (1985: 63), which resulted in a rather detailed map with a lot of finger-like extrusions and areas which almost touch one another. We believe that the species has a wider distribution, only lacking in eastern Somalia, southern Namibia and most of the RSA and probably also from the west and central African rainforest as mentioned by Happold. However, we need to point out that some of the east African records might need to be reassigned to a separate species, e.g., S. colias as was tentatively suggested by Vallo et al. (2011: 350).

Figures

Fig. 36. Distribution maps. A–B. Myotis tricolor (Temminck, 1832). C–D. Myotis welwitschii (Gray, 1866). E–F. Scotophilus dinganii (A. Smith, 1833). A, C, E. Distribution in the CRB area. B, D, F. Pan- African distribution.