Two New Cryptic Bat Species within the Myotis nattereri Species Complex (Vespertilionidae, Chiroptera) from the Western Palaearctic ...

• Main Authors: Juste, Javier, Ruedi, Manuel, Puechmaille, Sébastien J., Salicini, Irene, Ibáñez, Carlos
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Zenodo 2019
• Subjects: Biodiversity; Mammalia; Chiroptera; Chordata; Animalia; bats; bat; Myotis nattereri
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13519460; https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.13519460

(Uploaded by Plazi for the Bat Literature Project) The Myotis nattereri species complex consists of an entangled group of Western Palaearctic bats characterized by fringing hairs along the rear edge of their uropatagium. Some members are relatively common while others are rare but all forms are morphologically very similar and their taxonomy is unresolved. Recent studies based on different molecular markers have shown that several major and unexpected lineages exist within this group of forest-dwelling bats. All the mitochondrial and nuclear markers tested to date have shown that these major lineages evolved as fully independent and coherent units and therefore each qualifies as distinct species. In the absence of proper morphological diagnosis, these lineages are informally referred to in the literature under different names. We explore here the external and craniodental variation of these lineages. Although all morphological measurements were overlapping between these lineages, we show that lineages can be ...