Pteropus temmincki ennisae Flannery & White, 1991

Parnaby, Harry E., Ingleby, Sandy & Divljan, Anja, 2017, Type Specimens of Non-fossil Mammals in the Australian Museum, Sydney, Records of the Australian Museum 69 (5), pp. 277-420 : 388

Pteropus temmincki ennisae Flannery & White, 1991

National Geographic Research and Exploration 7(1): 100, figs 1, 4, tables 2–3. (1991: May or earlier).

Common name. Bismarck Flying-fox.

Current name. Pteropus ennisae Flannery & White, 1991 ; following Almeida et al. (2014).

Holotype. M.20438 by original designation. Female adult, [Field no. FE419], skull, study skin, skinned body in alc., frozen tissue; collected on 20 June 1988 by T. F. Flannery, L. Seri, T. Heinsohn and T. Ennis; registered on 6 June 1989. Condition. Cranium complete, soft palate in situ, hole in the right maxilla, and left temporal bone; broken left dentary, missing entire section posterior to last molar. Study skin has large bald patch on rump, otherwise in good condition.

Cranial measurements (mm). M.20438: GL, 55.5; ConL, 53.25; NasL, 14.70; NasB, 5.83; UC1–C1 (alv.), 10.56; PAL, 31.09; UPM (alv.), 3.69; UMR (alv.), 6.72; ZB, 30.69; POC, 8.64; BUL, 4.19 (length of annula); MB, 18.30; DL (condyl.), 42.41 (right dentary); LPM (alv.), 3.76; LMR (alv.), 8.90.

Type locality. Near Medina (2°55'S 151°23'E), New Ireland, New Ireland Province, Papua New Guinea.

Paratype. M.19904 by original designation. Male, study skin, skull, skinned body in alc., collected 24 June 1988 (paper states 23 June), in the Medina area by same collectors as the holotype. The remaining paratype, M.20804, female adult, skull, body in alc., frozen tissue; collected 26 June 1988, with the same locality and collectors as holotype, was sent to BMNH in December 1989.

Comments. Type series of three specimens. Photographs of the holotype skull are given in the original description, along with individual body measurements and summary statistics of two cranial and three dental measurements of the type series. Flannery (1995c) and subsequent authors considered P. temminckii Peters, 1867b and P. capistratus Peters, 1876b to be separate species, with ennisae as a subspecies of the latter. Almeida et al. (2014) suggest that P. capistratus and P. ennisae are best treated as sister species based on marked morphological differences combined with a level of gene sequence divergence more typical of interspecific differences.