Platyrrhinus brachycephalus (Rouk & D.C.Carter, 1972)

Velazco, Paúl M., Voss, Robert S., Fleck, David W. & Simmons, Nancy B., 2021, Mammalian Diversity And Matses Ethnomammalogy In Amazonian Peru Part 4: Bats, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2021 (451), pp. 1-201 : 107-108

Platyrrhinus brachycephalus

(Rouk and Carter, 1972)

Figure 26A

VOUCHER MATERIAL (TOTAL = 16): Estación Biológica Madre Selva (MUSM 32847, 32875), Isla Muyuy (MUSM 21222), Isla Padre (MUSM 4211, 4213, 4361), Jenaro Herrera (MUSM 5927), Quebrada Betilia (MUSA 15166), Quebrada Esperanza (FMNH 89095), Quebrada Lobo (MUSA 15113), Quebrada Pantaleón (MUSA 15253), Orosa (AMNH 73990–73993, 74013); see table 46 for measurements.

UNVOUCHERED OBSERVATIONS: One individual of Platyrrhinus brachycephalus was captured at Tapiche during the Sierra del Divisor Rapid Biological Inventory (Jorge and Velazco, 2006), and we captured one individual at El Chino Village on 16 February 2019.

IDENTIFICATION: Platyrrhinus brachycephalus is a widely distributed Amazonian species that also occurs in the montane forests of eastern Ecuador and eastern Peru (Velazco, 2005). It can be distinguished from other congeneric species by the following characteristics: small size (forearm <42 mm), U-shaped notch in posterior margin of uropatagium, outline of lateral margin of pterygoid process narrowly concave (small and c-shaped) in posterior view, and anterolingual cristid of the second lower premolar bearing two well-developed accessory cuspulids (Velazco, 2005; Velazco et al., 2010a; López-Baucells et al., 2018). Descriptions and measurements of P. brachycephalus were provided by Rouk and Carter (1972), Swanepoel and Genoways (1979), Williams and Genoways (1980a), Brosset and Charles-Dominique (1990), Velazco (2005), Velazco et al. (2010a), and Velazco and Lim (2014). Two subspecies are currently recognized: P. b. brachycephalus ( Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, and Bolivia) and P. b. saccharus (northeastern Venezuela and the Guianas) (Gardner, 2008f).

Ascorra et al. (1993) and Medina et al. (2015) correctly identified their material from Jenaro Herrera, Quebrada Betilia, Quebrada Lobo, and Quebrada Pantaleón as Platyrrhinus brachycephalus . The voucher material we examined from the Yavarí-Ucayali interfluve conforms to previous descriptions of P. b. brachycephalus , with measurements that fall within the range of size variation previously documented for the subspecies.

REMARKS: All three recorded captures of Platyrrhinus brachycephalus accompanied by ecological information from our region were in mistnets: one in an elevated net in a clearing, another in a ground-level net in a clearing, and a third in a ground-level net in primary forest.