Megaerops wetmorei Taylor, 1934

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 : 11

Megaerops wetmorei Taylor, 1934

Megaerops wetmorei Taylor, 1934: 191 ; near Tatayan, Cotobato, Mindanao Island, PHILIP- PINES (E. H. Taylor, collector; Described based on specimen No. 770 in E.H. Taylor’s collection with unknown current location) [ 83].

Common English name: White-collared Fruit Bat

Barcode Index Number: BOLD:AAX3327 (1 DNA barcode from Peninsular Malaysia;

Fig 2 )

IUCN status: Vulnerable

Remarks: The species was first recorded in Peninsular Malaysia as a new subspecies, M. w. albicollis in Pasoh Forest Reserve [ 84] with distinctive white tufts on the shoulders and neck [ 11, 84]. The type of M. wetmorei [ 83] lacked the white neck tufts (which was followed in the description by Corbet and Hill [ 9]) and has a short tail of 1.5 mm [ 83]. Specimens of M. w. albicollis from Pasoh Forest Reserve have a short tail of ~ 4 mm [ 84] whereas specimens from Krau Wildlife Reserve [ 11] are tailless. Further analysis, and more DNA barcordes, would be required to determine whether M. w. albicollis deserves to be recognised as a species distinct from M. w. wetmorei .

Recorded at: Pahang: Krau Wildlife Reserve [ 11]; Negeri Sembilan: Pasoh Forest Reserve [ 45, 84]. M. wetmorei has only been recorded in mature forests [ 11, 14].

Figures

Fig 2. Neighbour-joining tree showing all available DNA barcodes for species in family Pteropodidae 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, JV = Java, Indonesia, BN = Borneo (including Sabah, Sarawak, Brunei and Kalimantan), TH = Thailand, LA = Laos. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0179555.g002