Artibeus (Artibeus) lituratus (Olfers 1818)

[Phyllostomus] lituratus Olfers 1818, in: Eschwege, J. Brasilien, Neue Bibliothek. Reisenb., Vol. 15: 224.

Type Locality: Paraguay, Asunción.

Vernacular Names: Great Fruit-eating Bat.

Synonyms: Artibeus (Artibeus) dominicanus Andersen 1908 .

Subspecies::

Subspecies Artibeus (Artibeus) lituratus subsp. lituratus Olfers 1818

Subspecies Artibeus (Artibeus) lituratus subsp. koopmani Wilson 1991

Subspecies Artibeus (Artibeus) lituratus subsp. palmarum J. A. Allen 1897

Distribution: Michoacan, Sinaloa, and Tamaulipas (Mexico) south to S Brazil, N Argentina, and Bolivia; Trinidad and Tobago; S Lesser Antilles; Trés Marías Isls.

Conservation: IUCN 2003 and IUCN / SSC Action Plan (2001) – Lower Risk (lc) as A. lituratus and A. intermedius .

Discussion: Subgenus Artibeus . Includes palmarum but not fallax, hercules, or praeceps (Koopman, 1968, 1978 b), Handley (1987), and Marques-Aguiar (1994). Includes intermedius; see Jones and Carter (1976) and Marques-Aguiar (1994), but see also Davis (1984) and Wilson (1991). It is not appropriate to treat intermedius as a subspecies of lituratus because it supposedly co-occurs with other populations of lituratus (referred to palmarum, which has priority) at several Central American localities (Davis, 1984). Because there are no characters that unambiguously separate palmarum and intermedius (Davis, 1984; Marques-Aguiar, 1994; Rodrigo Medellin, pers. comm.), it seems most likely that intermedius simply represents individuals of palmarum that fall at the lower end of the normal range of size variation. Accordingly, I treat intermedius as a junior synonym of A. lituratus palmarum . Phylogeography discussed by Phillips et al. (1991) and Ditchfield (2000).