Lionycteris spurrelli Thomas, 1913

Velazco, Paúl M., Voss, Robert S., Fleck, David W. & Simmons, Nancy B., 2021, Mammalian Diversity And Matses Ethnomammalogy In Amazonian Peru Part 4: Bats, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2021 (451), pp. 1-201 : 54-55

Lionycteris spurrelli Thomas, 1913

VOUCHER MATERIAL: None.

UNVOUCHERED OBSERVATIONS: A single male individual of this species was captured and pho-

tographed at Wiswincho in October 2014 during the Tapiche-Blanco Rapid Biological Inventory (Escobedo-Torres, 2015).

IDENTIFICATION: Lionycteris is a monotypic genus that occurs from eastern Panama to Bolivia and Brazil (Griffiths and Gardner, 2008b). Lionycteris spurrelli can be easily distinguished from other lonchophyllines by the following traits: muzzle narrow and elongated, with short vibrissae; noseleaf with a short, wide spear; chin with dermal papillae arranged in a V and separated by a wide basal cleft ending ventrally in an unpaired papilla; pinnae small and rounded; base of dorsal pelage darker than tips; plagiopatagium attached near base of toe; greatest length of skull <21 mm; rostrum shorter than braincase; upper premolars short and broad; and both upper premolars with well-developed lingual cusps (Solmsen, 1998; Woodman and Timm, 2006; Griffiths and Gardner, 2008b; López-Baucells et al., 2018). Descriptions and measurements of L. spurrelli were provided by Phillips (1971), Carter and Dolan (1978), Swanepoel and Genoways (1979), Williams and Genoways (1980a), Gregorin and Ditchfield (2005), Woodman and Timm (2006), Woodman (2007), and Velazco and Patterson (2019). No subspecies are currently recognized (Griffiths and Gardner, 2008b).

The photographs of the male individual captured at Wiswincho exhibit the external morphological characteristics of L. spurrelli (e.g., dark brown fur; short rostrum; short, wide noseleaf; chin with dermal papillae arranged in a V ending ventrally in an unpaired papilla; small, rounded pinnae; and plagiopatagium attached near base of toe). Based on our examination of the photographs we see no reason to doubt Escobedo- Torres’s (2015) identification of the individual he captured and released at Wiswincho.

REMARKS: According to Escobedo-Torres (2015), bats were only captured using mistnets during the Tapiche-Blanco Rapid Biological Inventory, but whether Lionycteris spurrelli was taken at ground level or in the canopy is unknown. Unfortunately, electronically recorded field notes from this expedition have been corrupted, so no additional information is now available concerning this unique capture.