Rousettus aegyptiacus unicolor (Gray, 1870)

Decher, Jan, Hoffmann, Anke, Schaer, Juliane, N Orris, Ryan W., Kadjo, Blaise, Astrin, Jonas, Monadjem, Ara & Hutterer, Rainer, 2015, Bat diversity in the Simandou Mountain Range of Guinea, with the description of a new white-winged vespertilionid, Acta Chiropterologica 17 (2), pp. 255-282 : 263

Rousettus aegyptiacus unicolor (Gray, 1870)

New material

ZFMK 2008.0279, ♀, FC, 7 March 2008.

This was the second most common bat species of the survey with 53 individuals captured, 33 at FC, two at TO, three at PF, and 15 in the WSV. The 2002 RAP found two individuals at the high (W2) and 85 individuals at the low (BK) elevation site at Simandou, making it the second most commonly caught bat after Hipposideros fuliginosus in 2002. Rousettus aegyptiacus uses caves and mine tunnels as roosts being one of the few pteropodid species that is capable of echolocation ( Rosevear, 1965). Between 28 November and 2 December 2002 the RAP team visited a cave on the east slope of Pic de Fon with ‘a few thousand individuals’ of R. aegyptiacus where they observed and photograph- ed females in parturition (see photos in Mc- Cullough, 2004). When we checked this cave on 3 December 2008 it contained just one individual. Fahr et al. (2006) reported 28 R. aegyptiacus from Mt. Béro. At Mount Nimba this species occurs from 540–1,200 m elevation ( Verschuren, 1976; Wolton et al., 1982; Denys et al., 2013), and at Mount Cameroon up to 1,600 m ( Eisentraut, 1973). Our findings at Simandou indicate that R. aegyptiacus frequently uses creeks and rivers as flight corridors. Two studies found the nocturnal travel distances of R. aegyptiacus to be 24 and 11 km, respectively (Thomas and Fenton, 1978; Jacobsen et al., 1986).

Conservation status

Least Concern. Population trend considered stable ( IUCN, 2015).