Myotis albescens (E. Geoffroy, 1806)

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 : 136-137

Myotis albescens (É. Geoffroy St.-Hilaire, 1806)

Figure 34A

VOUCHER MATERIAL (TOTAL = 9): Jenaro Herrera (MUSM 5508), Nuevo San Juan (AMNH 272707; MUSM 13222, 15240), Orosa (AMNH 74017–74021); see table 60 for measurements.

UNVOUCHERED OBSERVATIONS: We captured four individuals of Myotis albescens at El Chino Village in February 2019.

IDENTIFICATION: Myotis albescens is distinguished from other Neotropical Myotis by the following combination of characteristics: fur long and silky, dorsal pelage with frosted appearance due to pale-tipped hairs, fringe of hairs present along the trailing edge of uropatagium, sagittal crest absent, broad interorbital and postorbital constrictions, and a globular braincase (LaVal, 1973; López-González et al., 2001;

Moratelli and de Oliveira, 2011). Descriptions and measurements of M. albescens were provided by Miller (1928), Husson (1962, 1978), Quintela et al. (2008), Braun et al. (2009), Moratelli and de Oliveira (2011), and Moratelli et al. (2013, 2015a). No subspecies are currently recognized (Braun et al., 2009), but analyses of molecular data (cytochrome b sequences) suggest the presence of at least four lineages that are>5 % divergent from each other (Larsen et al., 2012); the possibility that these mtDNA haplogroups represent cryptic taxa merits future testing with nuclear-gene sequences or phenotypic data.

Ascorra et al. (1993), Fleck et al. (2002), Moratelli and Oliveira (2011) and Moratelli and Wilson (2011) correctly identified the specimens from Jenaro Herrera, Nuevo San Juan, and Orosa, which conform to previous qualitative and morphometric descriptions of Myotis albescens .

REMARKS: Four recorded nocturnal captures of Myotis albescens are accompanied by ecological data from our region, all of which were made in ground-level mistnets; these include one individual netted in secondary vegetation, two netted in clearings, and one netted over a stream. A single individual was smacked out of the air with a stick by a Matses man as it flew by along the shoreline of the Río Gálvez at dusk.

We found a single roost of Myotis albescens near Nuevo San Juan, where a solitary adult male was found beneath a sheet of exfoliating bark on the underside of a fallen tree in a Matses swidden on 31 May 1998. Another roosting group of Myotis albescens was found among the rafters supporting the roof of the school at El Chino on 21 February 2019; we captured three adult females (one of which was carrying a pup), but a number of other individuals escaped.

Figures

FIG. 34. Photographs of A, an