Mops nanulus J. A. Allen, 1917

Decher, Jan, Hoffmann, Anke, Schaer, Juliane, N Orris, Ryan W., Kadjo, Blaise, Astrin, Jonas, Monadjem, Ara & Hutterer, Rainer, 2015, Bat diversity in the Simandou Mountain Range of Guinea, with the description of a new white-winged vespertilionid, Acta Chiropterologica 17 (2), pp. 255-282 : 276

Mops nanulus J. A. Allen, 1917

New material

ZFMK 2008.0310 , ♂, FC, 8 March 2008 ; ZFMK 2008.0311 , ♀, PF 17 March 2008 .

A single male of this smallest West African molossid bat was captured in the canopy net over the creek in closed evergreen forest at FC and two females in the canopy net on the ridge at PF ridge. The specimen from PF carried an embryo of 20 mm crown-rump length. Verschuren (1976) recorded two individuals near the River Douoble at Liberian Mount Nimba. At Njala, Sierra Leone, nine adult females with three young were found roosting in a crack of a tree, others in a thatched roof and one in a bamboo thicket. Mops nanulus is considered a high forest and fringing forest species ( Rosevear, 1965; Grubb et al., 1998). Upon the discovery of this species in DR Congo in 1917 seven individuals were found in a cavity high up in a tree, the entrance of which was concealed by epiphytic ferns ( Allen et al., 1917). Our captures from the Foko Ridge show that this forest-dwelling molossid does leave the forest to hunt in open habitat.

Conservation status

Least Concern. Population trend is unknown ( IUCN, 2015).