Cynopterus, F. Cuvier, 1824

Patterson, Georgina, Martin, Thomas Edward, Adams, Nathan, Cropper, Olivia, Mustari, Abdul Haris & Tosh, David G., 2017, Lowland rainforest bat communities of Buton Island, Southeast Sulawesi, including new regional records, Raffles Bulletin of Zoology 65, pp. 373-385 : 377

Cynopterus c.f. brachyotis

A common species in our study area, known from a total of 33 captures in BUR, LFR and open farmland habitats. The species is widespread across much of South and Southeast Asia, and has been formerly noted as occurring on Buton by Campbell et al. (2004). The taxonomy of C. brachyotis remains uncertain. It is classified as a single species by the taxonomic resource followed in this paper ( Wilson & Reeder, 2015), although genetic analyses suggest that it is likely to be a complex of different lineages ( Campbell et al., 2004). Other sources, notably the IUCN (2016), thus separate C. brachyotis into several different species, three of which potentially could occur in our study area (the nominate C. brachyotis , C. minutus and C. luzoniensis ). However, without genetic analyses we are unable to determine with confidence which of these three proposed taxonomic splits the individuals captured on Buton belong to. To account for this potential uncertainty, we therefore class our records on Buton Island as C. c.f. brachyotis , rather than classify it as a specific species as recommended by Wilson & Reeder (2015). Interestingly, our results do indicate some morphological separation between C. c.f. brachyotis individuals sampled in forest and those caught in open habitats, as theorised by Campbell et al. (2004). Individuals caught in open farmland habitats (N=7) possessed, on average, a slightly longer forearm length (62.2 mm) compared with those caught in forest (N=26) (57.14 mm). This could perhaps provide some tentative evidence for open-area populations developing longer wing-length to adapt to less confined environments, although this cannot be considered conclusive due to our small sample size, and this requires further research.