Vespertilio Bechsteinii Kuhl, 1817

Turni, Hendrik & Kock, Dieter, 2008, Type specimens of bats (Chiroptera: Mammalia) in the collections of the Museum f r Naturkunde, Berlin, Zootaxa 1869 (1), pp. 1-82 : 55-56

Vespertilio Bechsteinii Kuhl, 1817

Kuhl, H. (1817) Die Deutschen Fledermäuse. Hanau, p. 6, 22 [1–67].

Valid name: Myotis bechsteinii (Kuhl, 1817)

Syntype: ZMB 6308 (old number = ZMB 459 ), skin and skull, male; presumably Germany; collected by Kuhl; purchased from Kuhl in September 1818 .

Comment : Kuhl (1817) mentioned that bechsteinii is rare in the Wetterau [landscape northern from Frank- furt am Main]. In a letter, dated July 1816, Kuhl told Lichtenstein , that Leisler´s bat collection had been purchased by the Elector of Hessen. This collection is presumably lost. Kuhl offered his own collection for sale. As documented by Lichtenstein (acquisition list 1818, p. 24), some of Kuhl´s original specimens were purchased in 1816, e.g. ZMB 471 and ZMB 472 “ V. dasycarpos [= leisleri ] mas. et fem. [male and female], for 22 fl[oren = currency]”, and in September 1818, e.g. ZMB 459 [= 6308] “ Vespertilio bechsteinii , for 11 fl[oren]”, ZMB 461 “ Vespertilio mystacinus , for 11 fl[oren]” and ZMB 485 “ Vespertilio discolor , for 12 fl[oren]”. After 1818 no further german bat specimens from Kuhl´s collection were acquired. In 1820, Kuhl and his colleague van Hasselt travelled to Java [ Indonesia] where Kuhl died in 1821. The whereabout of additional type specimens is unknown. ZMB 6308 is probably the only remaining specimen of Kuhl’s collection .

In general, the page numbers for the species named and described by Kuhl are often cited incorrectly. In part because Kuhl’s “Die Deutschen Fledermäuse” was published for the first time in 1817 in Hanau (pp. 1– 67), while in 1818 the same work was reprinted in the Annalen der Wetterauischen Gesellschaft für die gesamte Naturkunde, Frankfurt am Main in two parts (pp. 11–49; pp. 185–215).