A new genus and new species of the Old World false vampire bat (family Megadermatidae) is described based on specimens from Halabala Wildlife Research Station, the southernmost forest complex in peninsular Thailand. The paper reporting this discovery is published in the latest issue of Zootaxa.
The new bat, with a scientific name Eudiscoderma thongareeae, is named to reflect its disc-shaped noseleaf and to honor Ms Siriporn Thongaree, former head of Halabala Wildlife Research Station.
The species is believed to be very rare as it is known from only 3 specimens collected during the last 15 years from a very small area around the wildlife research station. It was initially suspected to be just a new species of the well-known Megaderma which is the common genus in the area. However, after a comparison to specimens of other known genera of the family in natural history museums, it turns out that it cannot be assigned to any existing genera.
“It seems the new genus is the evolutionary link, as it shares characters with both Asian (Megaderma) and African (Lavia and Cardioderma) genera. And we have a plan to continue studying more in details of the phylogeography of this interesting family. It is a very rare bat - but we believe that it is very likely to be found in peninsular Malaysia too” said Dr. Pipat Soisook, Prince of Songkla University, the senior author of the paper.
Although there are groups of scientist have been working actively in Southeast Asia, the find of this new bat suggests that there are more species out there, particularly in forest habitats, in the region to be discovered.
“This is a fantastic discovery. To find a new genus of mammal is extraordinarily rare. After over 250 years of research there are only 202 bat genera known worldwide and only 43 recorded from Thailand. It represents Thailand's only endemic genus of bat and only its third endemic bat species. PSU team has done a brilliant piece of scientific detective work to discover and describe this fascinating new bat” said Dr. Paul Bates, Harrison Institute, a co-author of the paper.
Full citation: Pipat Soisook, Amorn Prajakjitr, Sunate Karapan, Charles M. Francis and Paul J. J. Bates. 2015. A new genus and species of false vampire (Chiroptera: Megadermatidae) from peninsular Thailand. Zootaxa, 3931 (4): 528–550.