Osmania University scientist discovers new species of Bat in Karnataka

A mother and son researcher duo has discovered a new species of bat from a cave in Makuta, Kodagu district

Hyderabad: A mother and son researcher duo has discovered a new species of bat from a cave in Makuta, Kodagu district, Karnataka.

Dr.Bhargavi Srinivasulu, a researcher with the Osmania University along with her son, Aditya Srinivasulu, a PhD researcher based at University of Reading, UK, have named their discovery, as Miniopetrus srinii Srini’s Bent-winged Bat.

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They described have described this cryptic species of bat based on multiple lines of evidence and said, “We collected the specimens of bats from a large subterranean cave in the dense jungles of Western Ghats in Makuta, we doubted that this could be a cryptic species of bat, which we had tentatively identified as the Small Bent-winged Bat.”

The Bent-winged Bats are small-sized bats that live in large colonies of a few hundred individuals in caves. They are found in southern Europe, Africa, Madagascar, Asia, Australia, New Caledonia and Vanuatu. In India, four species of bent-winged bats are known, with the discovery of the new species the number has increased to five, the researchers said.

The specimens of bats were collected from a large subterranean cave in the dense jungles of Western Ghats in Makuta. The Small Bent-winged Bat is reported from the Nicobar Islands, peninsular India, Nepal and Northeast India.

“Our research on Andaman bats has revealed that the fauna on the islands are genetically different from those on mainland India. We doubted that the Makuta specimens and those reported from other parts of Western Ghats may be cryptic species. We conducted morphological, cranial, echolocation and genetic studies to determine the relationship between the Makuta specimens and others” shared Dr. Bhargavi Srinivasulu, a UGC Postdoctoral Fellow at Department of Zoology, OU.

The new species has been named in honour of Prof. C Srinivasulu, a bat biologist working in OU. The description of the new species has been published in the latest issue of Zootaxa – a peer-reviewed scientific mega journal for animal taxonomists.