Miniopterus schreibersii villiersi Aellen, 1956

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 : 274-275

Miniopterus schreibersii villiersi Aellen, 1956

New material

ZFMK 2008.0304 , ♀, TO, 15 March 2008 ; ZFMK 2008.0305 , ♀, FR, 18 March 2008 ; ZFMK 2009.0024 , ♂, W1, 4 December 2008 ; ZFMK 2009.0025, ♀, WSV, 12 December 2008; ZFMK 2009.0029 , ♂, WSV, 14 December 2008 .

Twenty-two individuals of this velvety-furred species were captured making it the third most common bat in 2008. One individual was obtained over the creek at W1, two in the canopy net over the creek at TO, three females in three different nets on the ridge at PF, and 16 individuals in the canopy net over the stream in the WSV. This taxon was described by Aellen (1956) as Miniopterus inflatus villiersi from the Grotte du Marché, Dalaba, Guinea. Miniopterus schreibersii villiersi was recorded on the 2002 RAP by Fahr and Ebigbo (2003), on the 2003 RAP from Mount Béro ( Fahr et al., 2006), and recently from two localities in the Fouta Djallon (Weber and Fahr, 2007 b), who have argued for its elevation as a separate species, M. villiersi , which in turn would limit M. schreibersii to a circum-Mediterranean and southern Palaearctic distribution. Konstantinov et al. (2000) reported a large colony from the ‘Mangamoria’ cave near Kindia, Guinea. This species uses caves as day roosts and in West Africa appears to prefer montane areas reaching 2,500 m on Mount Cameroon ( Rosevear, 1965; Hutterer et al., 1992). Females caught on 15 March 2008 at TO and 18 March 2008 at PF ( ZFMK 2008.0304 + 2008.0305) carried single embryos of 12 and 14 mm crown-rump length, respectively. It most likely also uses caves and rock crevices on the slopes and ridges of the submontane forest at Simandou and travels along the creeks to forage at lower elevations.

Conservation status

Not yet evaluated as a species separate from M. schreibersii . Near Threatened, as subspecies of M. schreibersii with a decreasing population trend ( IUCN, 2015).