Chiroderma villosum Peters, 1860

Simmons, Nancy B. & Voss, Robert S., 1998, The mammals of Paracou, French Guiana, a Neotropical lowland rainforest fauna. Part 1, Bats, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 237, pp. 1-219 : 115-116

Chiroderma villosum Peters

VOUCHER MATERIAL: 3 females (AMNH *267191, *267474, *268536) and 5 males (AMNH *267190, *267475, *268535; MNHN *1995.1195, *1995.1196); see table 42 for measurements.

IDENTIFICATION: Descriptions and comparative measurements of Chiroderma villosum can be found in Goodwin and Greenhall (1961), Husson (1962, 1978), Hill (1964), Genoways and Williams (1979), Swanepoel and Genoways (1979), Hall (1981), Brosset and Charles­Dominique (1990), and Anderson (1997). Two subspecies are currently recognized: C. v. jesupi (Mexico to northern Colombia) and C. v. villosum (tropical South America east of the Andes from Colombia to southeastern Brazil, including Trinidad and Tobago) (Koopman, 1994).

Although our Paracou series of Chiroderma villosum agrees in qualitative and quantitative characters with previous descriptions of the species as a whole, craniodental measurement comparisons indicate that our specimens are substantially smaller than most of those previously reported from the Guianas. For example, the observed range in length of the maxillary toothrow is 7.96–8.66 mm at Paracou versus 8.6–10.2 mm at other Guianan localities from which measured specimens are reported in the literature cited above. An apparently individual anomaly is represented by one of our male specimens, AMNH 268535, which has only one pair of upper and lower incisors; all of our remaining specimens have two pairs in both jaws, the normal formula for Chiroderma (see Koopman, 1994).

FIELD OBSERVATIONS: We caught eight Chiroderma villosum at Paracou, of which four were taken in ground­level mistnets and four in elevated nets. Two ground­level captures were made in well­drained primary forest, one in swampy primary forest, and one in creekside primary forest. Two specimens were captured 34–37 m above a treefall opening in well­drained primary forest and two others were netted 17–20 m above a narrow dirt road.