Artibeus (Artibeus) planirostris (Spix, 1823)

Velazco, Paúl M. & Patterson, Bruce D., 2019, Small Mammals Of The Mayo River Basin In Northern Peru, With The Description Of A New Species Of Sturnira (Chiroptera: Phyllostomidae), Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2019 (429), pp. 1-69 : 23

Artibeus (Artibeus) planirostris (Spix, 1823)

VOUCHER MATERIAL: El Diamante: 2 adult females ( FMNH 203608 ; MUSM 39135 ) ; Tingana: 1 adult female ( FMNH 203436 ) ; Waqanki: 2 adult females ( FMNH 203606 ; MUSM 39134 ), 1 adult male ( FMNH 203434 ) ; see table 10 for measurements.

IDENTIFICATION: We consulted descriptions and measurements of Artibeus planirostris provided by Husson (1962, 1978), Patten (1971), Handley (1987), Brosset and Charles-Dominique (1990), Lim and Wilson (1993), Lim (1997), Hollis (2005), and Lim et al. (2005). Currently three subspecies are recognized: A. p. fallax ( Venezuela [south and east of the Orinoco river]), Trinidad, Grenada, Guyana, Surinam, French Guiana, and the lower Amazon basin of Brazil), A. p. hercules (southeastern Colombia and the eastern lowlands of Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia), and A. p. planirostris (southern Bolivia, northern Argentina, Paraguay, and eastern and southern Brazil) ( Marques-Aguiar, 2008). The only major morphological difference recognized among subspecies is that A. p. hercules tends to be larger than the other subspecies ( Hollis, 2005). Based on distribution, the voucher material from Mayo River basin should correspond to the subspecies A. p. hercules. However, measurements of our material span the published variation of size for the entire species, and hence do not conform to published characteristics of the subspecies. We therefore recommend against formally recognizing subspecies in Artibeus planirostris until truly diagnostic characters can be found, including additional data from molecular markers.