Rhinolophus cf. swinnyi Gough 1908

Monadjem, Ara, Schoeman, M. Corrie, Reside, April, P Io, Dorothea V., Stoffberg, Samantha, Bayliss, Julian, (Woody) Cotterill, F. P. D., Curran, Michael, Kopp, Mirjam & Taylor, Peter J., 2010, A recent inventory of the bats of Mozambique with documentation of seven new species for the country, Acta Chiropterologica 12 (2), pp. 371-391 : 379

Rhinolophus cf. swinnyi Gough 1908

A series of small rhinolophids was collected from a cave (‘Gerhard’s cave’) south of the Save River, and from Mount Inago and Mount Namuli in northern Mozambique. Using existing keys based on morphological and cranial measurements ( Taylor, 2000; Csorba et al., 2003), these specimens were identifiable as R. swinnyi . However, molecular analyses of the mtDNA cytochrome b gene (which included other Southern African species such as R. blasii , R. capensis , R. denti , R. landeri , R. simulator and R. swinnyi ) show that these individuals group with typical R. simulator (S. Stoffberg, unpublished) from which they differ both in morphology (smaller skull lengths) and echolocation (peak echolocation frequencies ranging between 99– 103 kHz; Pettersson D980, n = 10). Specimens were observed to have dark-brown coloured spots on the cheeks. We thus chose to provisionally designate these genetically distinctive, small, brown-cheeked specimens (which are most likely an undescribed cryptic species morphologically similar to swinnyi ) as ‘ cf. swinnyi ’. Peak echolocation frequencies of R. swinnyi in South Africa are similar at 106.6 kHz, but those for R. simulator in South Africa are 20 kHz lower ( Schoeman and Jacobs, 2008). This suggests that these individuals may represent an undescribed species.

Field measurements: FA (adult male) 42.5 ± 0.56 (42.0–43.3, 5); Bm (adult male) 6.0 ± 0.82 (5.0–7.0, 4); FA (adult female) 42.5 ± 0.60 (41.6–43.1, 5); Bm (adult female) 6.7 ± 0.97 (5.5–8.0, 5). Mean noseleaf width was 7.24 ± 0.44 for males (n = 5) and 7.38 ± 0.31 for the females (n = 5). (See Table 2 for cranial measurements).