Hipposideros halophyllus Hill and Yenbutra, 1984

Voon-Ching Lim, Rosli Ramli, Subha Bhassu & John-James Wilson, 2017, A checklist of the bats of Peninsular Malaysia and progress towards a DNA barcode reference library, PLoS ONE 12 (7), pp. 1-65 : 18-20

Hipposideros halophyllus Hill and Yenbutra, 1984

Hipposideros halophyllus Hill and Yenbutra, 1984: 77 ; Khao Sa Moa Khon (= Khao Sa Moa Khon), Tha Woong (= Ta Woong), Lop Buri, THAILAND (Kitti Thonglongya, collector; TNRC 54–3694 ) [ 115].

Common English name: Thai Roundleaf Bat

Barcode Index Number: BOLD:AAX1220 (1 DNA barcode from Peninsular Malaysia; Fig 4 )

Remarks: The BIN also contains a DNA barcode labelled as H. ater from India which was originally mined from Genbank. The DNA barcode of “ H. ater ” is likely to be a case of misidentification as H. halophyllus and H. ater are distinct species. H. halophyllus has a kidneyshaped internarial septum whereas H. ater has a slightly inflated and triangular internarial septum [ 30]. It is unlikely that H. ater occurs in Peninsular Malaysia due to the lack of any records, however, Peninsular Malaysia is included in the distribution range of H. ater in some literature [ 1, 9].

IUCN status: Vulnerable

Recorded at: Perak: Bukit Jerneh Cave and Tumang Lembing Cave [ 30] .

H. halophyllus has been recorded in and nearby limestone caves in Peninsular Malaysia and Thailand [ 14, 30]. It is unknown whether H. halophyllus is strictly confined to limestone areas or this association is an effect of limited sampling but it is likely that the species requires specialised roosting habitat [ 30].

Hipposiderosbicolor speciescomplex. Hipposiderosbicolor wasfirstrecognisedasacryptic species complex by Kingston et al. [ 16] who discovered two phonic types under H. bicolor sensu lato with individuals echolocating at 131 kHz (= H. bicolor 131) or at 142 kHz (= H. bicolor 142). The two phonic types are 6.5–6.8% divergent in mtDNA [ 16] yet morphologically similar and overlap in size [ 16]. Although the phonic types have been widely recognised as distinct species, some recent reports still use H. bicolor to represent both phonic types [ 50, 61, 67, 111] which leads to ambiguity regarding the occurrence of the species. The two phonic types were recently formalised under Latin names: H. bicolor (= bicolor131) and H. atrox (= bicolor142) [ 17]. However, our search of DNA barcodes on BOLD coupled with recent DNA barcoding suggested that the H. bicolor complex is even more complicated ( Fig 4 ).

Figures

Fig 4. Neighbour-joining tree showing all available DNA barcodes for species in family Hipposideridae reported from Peninsular Malaysia. The percentage of pseudoreplicate trees (±70%) in which the DNA barcodes clustered together in the bootstrap test (500 pseudoreplicates) are shown above the branches. Abbreviation as follows: PM = Peninsular Malaysia,VN = Vietnam, BN = Borneo (including Sabah & Sarawak of East Malaysia, Brunei and Kalimantan Indonesia), TH = Thailand, LA = Laos, SM = Sumatera Indonesia, CH = China, CM = Cambodia. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0179555.g004