Taxonomic revision of African pipistrelle-like bats with a new species from the West Congolean rainforest
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Oxford University Press
Abstract
The taxonomic conundrum of pipistrelle-like or pipistrelloid bats remains one of the unsolved challenges posed by African Chiroptera. Historically, their cryptic morphology has led to a frequently confused classification and cast doubt on taxonomic arrangements at both genus and species levels. While molecular analyses and extensive reviews of specimens housed in collections worldwide have clarified many systematic relationships among pipistrelloid bats, some species still require validation, leaving gaps in our overall understanding of the systematics of the group. The Congo rainforest, one of Africa's least explored regions, remains underrepresented in systematic studies of pipistrelloid bats. In this study, we combine the use of two mitochondrial genes and cranial morphometric analyses to provide an updated perspective on African pipistrelloid bats, focusing on new material from Equatorial Guinea sampled over multiple years. We confirm the placement of Af. musciculus and Af. crassulus within the genus Afropipistrellus. The former was previously included in Hypsugo, while the latter lacked generic confirmation. Additionally, we describe a new species of Pipistrellus from Bioko Island, Central Africa, uncovered during systematic bat surveys in the region. Further surveys in the Congo rainforest are needed to unveil African bat diversity and its phylogenetic relationships fully.
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DATA AVAILABILITY : The data underlying this article are available in the GenBank Nucleotide Database at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/
SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL 1
FIGURE S1. Results of maximum likelihood (ML) and Bayesian inference analysis combined on a ML tree of mitochondrial Cytochrome c Oxidase Subunit I sequences of African pipistrelloids incorporating Pipistrellus sp. nov. based on the General Time Reversal + Gamma (G) + Invariable sites (I) model. Filled red circles on nodes denote bootstrap (BS) values ≥ 70% and Bayesian posterior probabilities (PP) ≥ 0.90. Open circles outlined in black indicate BS ≥ 70% and PP < 0.90, and open circles outlined in red indicate BS < 70% and PP > 0.90. Labels include species name and GenBank accession number or specimen/sample number (Supporting Information Table S2).
FIGURE S2. Dorsal (A), ventral (B) and lateral (C) views of bacula of four species of Afropipistrellus: AEI—Af. eisentrauti (EBD 19104M), AMU—Af. musciculus (EBD 20568M), ACR—Af. crassulus (EBD 34811M), AHA—Af. happoldorum (EBD 16827M) from Mainland Equatorial Guinea. For ACR the dorsal view was not available.
FIGURE S3. Dorsal (A), lateral (B) and ventral (C) views of the baculum Afropipistrellus bellieri (DM 13222) from Liberia (Monadjem et al., 2013). Scale = 1 mm.
FIGURE S4. Distribution maps, incorporating the records from this study, of (A) Afropipistrellus crassulus (black dots), Af. cf. crassulus (black dots within the circle) and Af. bellieri (grey dots), (B) Af. eisentrauti, (C) Af. happoldorum, (D) Af. musciculus, (E) Pseudoromicia mbamminkom and (F) Ps. roseveari. The circle from map A represents Af. cf. crassulus eastern population (from Kenya, Uganda, South Sudan and eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo).
FIGURE S5. Tragi of five Pipistrellus species examined for this study: Pi. sp. nov.—Pi. etula holotype (EBD 19203M), PSI—Pi. simandouensis (DM 13220), PHE—Pi. hesperidus (DM 8477), PRU—Pi. rusticus (DM 13587) and PNA—Pi. nanulus (EBD 20450M).
TABLE S1. List of pipistrelloid bat species described in the past decade in Africa.
TABLE S4. External measurements (mm) and mass (g) of Afropipistrellus species from Equatorial Guinea. Measurements are presented as mean ± standard deviation, range and sample size (N).
TABLE S5. Cranial measurements (mm) of Afropipistrellus species from Equatorial Guinea. Measurements are presented as mean ± standard deviation, range and sample size (N).
TABLE S6. Dental measurements (mm) of Afropipistrellus species from Equatorial Guinea. Measurements are presented as mean ± standard deviation, range and sample size (N).
TABLE S7. Baculum total length, basal and tip widths of five Afropipistrellus species reviewed in this study.
SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL 2
TABLE S2. Cytochrome b (Cytb) and Cytochrome c Oxidase Subunit I (COI) sequences of pipistrelloid species and outgroups used in this study.
TABLE S3. Estimates of evolutionary divergence were determined for the Vespertilionini tribe based on the average number of base substitutions between groups of species. Analyses were conducted using the Tamura-Nei model (Tamura et al., 2021). The analysis involved 122 nucleotide sequences. Codon positions included were 1st+2nd+3rd+Noncoding. All positions containing gaps and missing data were eliminated. There was a total of 41 positions in the final dataset.
Keywords
Africa, Baculum, Chiroptera, Genus revision, Mammalia, Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), Morphometrics, Systematics, Taxonomy, Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)
Sustainable Development Goals
SDG-15: Life on land
Citation
Laura Torrent, Javier Juste, Inazio Garin, Joxerra Aihartza, Desiré L Dalton, Mnqobi Mamba, Iroro Tanshi, Luke L Powell, Sara Padidar, Juan Luis Garcia Mudarra, Leigh Richards, Ara Monadjem, Taxonomic revision of African pipistrelle-like bats with a new species from the West Congolean rainforest, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, Volume 204, Issue 2, June 2025, zlaf020, https://doi.org/10.1093/zoolinnean/zlaf020.