Public health and social measures have been implemented around the world in a bid to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Public compliance with these measures is key in successfully controlling the pandemic. This online survey assessed the compliance and attitude of adults residing in the southern African Kingdom of Eswatini to government protection, activity and travel measures aimed at controlling the spread of COVID-19. A rapid online survey, comprising of 28 questions, was administered in May 2020. More than 90% of respondents knew the virus could kill anyone and most respondents (70%) reported to be compliant to public health and social measures. Females, those who did not use public transport and those aged 30 years and above were significantly (p<0.01) more compliant, particularly to protective and travel measures. Social media, television and official government websites were the primary source of ongoing COVID-19 information for respondents of this online survey, and these methods should continue to be employed to reach the public who regularly use the internet. More than half of essential workers who responded to the online survey reported to have their own personal protective equipment; however, 32% either did not have any protective equipment or shared their equipment with other staff members. Due to the survey being online, these results should not be generalised to populations of low socioeconomic status.

Ten years ago, the genus-level and species-level taxonomy of African pipistrelloid bats was in a state of flux. In spite of advances in the past decade, gaps in collecting from species-rich regions like Angola have hampered efforts to revise this group. We report on new collections of pipistrelle-like bats from the poorly sampled central highlands of Angola (1000–1500 m a.s.l.) as well as comparative material from lower-lying areas of Eswatini and South Africa. Specimens identified as Neoromicia anchietae, collected 400–700 km east of the holotype locality in the western highlands of Angola, were genetically and morphologically distinctive from N. anchietae s.l. from South Africa and Eswatini. We describe herein this latter lineage as a distinct species from low-lying areas of south-eastern Africa, distinct from N. anchietae s.s., which is therefore restricted to the central and western Angolan highlands. We also identified shallow to deep genetic divergence between different African regions in other recognized pipistrelloid species, such as conspecificity between the long-eared species Laephotis angolensis from Angola and Laephotis botswanae from northern Botswana, northern Namibia and south-western Zambia. Our phylogeny supports a recently proposed generic classification of African pipistrelloid bats.