Miniopterus fraterculus Thomas & Schwann, 1906

Fig. 32 E–F

Miniopterus fraterculus Thomas & Schwannn, 1906: 162 .

* Miniopterus schreibersi villiersi Aellen, 1956: 890 .

Koopman (1965: 18) refers to Harrison (1953: 71), who revised the Miniopterus forms of southern Africa, where he distinguished two species: “the large natalensis and the small fraterculus ”. Unfortunately, however, this distinction doesn’t seem to hold (see key).

Hayman et al. (1966: 59–60) assigned most of their material to Miniopterus schreibersi villiersi and only 15 specimens from two localities to M. s. vicinior. The latter are plotted on their map 90, but no separate map was presented for M. s. villiersi . Apparently, these specimens were included on map 88 ( M. inflatus).

In “ Mammals of Africa ”, Bernard & Happold (2013d: 713; 2013e: 719) restrict M. fraterculus to the northwestern part of the DRC and M. natalensis to the southeastern part. We are following this division for the CRB material, with specimens from the DRC provinces of Haut-Uélé, Ituri, Nord-Kivu, and Sud-Kivu, as well as from Rwanda and Burundi being assigned to M. fraterculus and those from the provinces of Tanganyika, Haut-Lomami and Haut-Katanga to M. natalensis . However, we also assigned records from more southwestern localities to the latter species: Luluabourg (= Kananga, Kasaï-Central Province) and near Thysville (= Mbanza-Ngongo, Kongo Central Province).

See also Miniopterus natalensis (A. Smith, 1833) below.