A New Dichromatic Species of Myotis (Chiroptera: Vespertilionidae) from the Nimba Mountains, Guinea

Abstract

The genus Myotis is a diverse group of vespertilionid bats found on nearly every continent. One clade in this group, the subgenus Chrysopteron, is characterized by reddish to yellowish fur and, in some cases, visually striking dichromatic wing pigmentation. Here, we describe a new dichromatic species of Myotis (Chrysopteron) from the Nimba Mountains in Guinea. The new species is superficially similar to Myotis welwitschii, but phylogenetic analyses based on cytochrome b data indicated that it is actually more closely related to M. tricolor. Discovery of this new taxon increases the number of Myotis species known from mainland Africa to 11 species, although patterns of molecular divergence suggest that cryptic species in the Chrysopteron clade remain to be described. This discovery also highlights the critical importance of the Nimba Mountains as a center of bat diversity and endemism in sub-Saharan Africa.

Diversity and activity rate of a bat communities in a voluntary nature reserve in the Agneby-Tiassa region (South-East, Côte d’Ivoire)

“…The Ivorian government's policy of encouraging the setting aside of forest areas through Voluntary Nature Reserves (RNV) is beneficial for the fauna of these regions where these forests exist. Indeed, these habitats could represent the only refuges for residual fauna, particularly for bats and birds that are able to move over long distances (Okon, 2013 [48,36,23,47] .…”

“…On the other hand, the sites surveyed to study them remain limited and are mainly protected areas. These include the Lamto Reserve in the preforest savannah zone (Bergmans et al, 1974;Thomas, 1983) [11,12] , the Taï National Park (Gordon, 2001;Henry et al, 2004;Koné, 1996) [15,16,17] and Azagny (Nesi et al, 2013) [18] in the evergreen forest zone, the Comoé and Mont Sangbé National Parks in the Sudanian savannah zone (Fahr and Ebigbo, 2003) [12] , the Mont Nimba Integrated Reserve in the mountain forest zone (Brosset, 1985;Denys et al, 2013;Monadjem et al, 2013Monadjem et al, , 2016Simmons et al, 2021) [18,19,20,21,22] and the breeding colonies of the African straw bats (Eidolon helvum) in the Plateau-Abidjan commune (Niamien et al, 2010(Niamien et al, , 2015(Niamien et al, , 2017 [5,13,23] . Studies carried out in the Taï and Comoé National Parks and those from other sources estimate the species richness of chiropterans in Côte d'Ivoire to be between 42 and 87 species in these richest massifs in Côte d'Ivoire (Brosset, 1985;Fahr and Kalko, 2010; [18,24,2] .…”

An island in a sea of sand: a first checklist of the herpetofauna of the Serra da Neve inselberg, southwestern Angola

“…This is especially true for East-African Afromontane inselberg regions, as in the case of Mount Namuli and Mount Mabu in Mozambique (e.g., Timberlake et al 2009 ; Portik et al 2013a , 2013b ; Brand et al 2011 ; Bayliss et al 2014 ) or Mount Mulanje in Malawi ( Curran et al 2012 ). Due to this interest, in recent years several new endemic animal species, such as amphibians ( Ceríaco et al 2018 ; Conradie et al 2018 ), reptiles ( Branch et al 2005 ; Branch and Bayliss 2009 ; Branch and Tolley 2010 ; Portik et al 2013b ; Branch et al 2014 , 2019 ; Marques et al 2019 , 2020 , 2023a , 2023b ), invertebrates ( Congdon et al 2010 ; Daniels and Bayliss 2012 ; Bilton 2014 ; Daniels et al 2014 , 2020 ), and mammals ( Monadjem et al 2010 ; Taylor et al 2012 ; Simmons et al 2021 ) have been described from inselbergs across Africa. Several studies have also provided inventories of the herpetofauna ( Michael et al 2008 ; Kirchhof et al 2010 ; Conradie et al 2016a ; Bittencourt-Silva et al 2020 ) and plant diversity ( Rabarimanarivo et al 2019 ; Porembski and Barthlott 2000 ; Burke 2003 ; Kandziora et al 2022 ; Brand et al 2019 ) of these inselbergs across the continent.…”