Rhinolophus cognatus Andersen, 1906

Srinivasulu, Chelmala, Srinivasulu, Aditya, Srinivasulu, Bhargavi, Gopi, Asad, Dar, Tauseef Hamid, Bates, Paul J. J., Rossiter, Stephen J. & Jones, Gareth, 2017, Recent surveys of bats from the Andaman Islands, India: diversity, distribution, and echolocation characteristics, Acta Chiropterologica 19 (2), pp. 419-437 : 429

7. Rhinolophus cognatus Andersen, 1906

Andaman Horseshoe Bat

New records

Middle Andaman Islands: Baratang Island and Interview Island.

Previous records

North Andaman Islands: Narcondam Island (ZSIK), Point Island (HZM) and an unknown location on North Central Andaman (ZSIK); Middle Andaman Islands: Interview Island (HZM); South Andaman: Mount Harriet (ZSIK).

Comments

Endemic to Andaman Islands. Fifteen individuals were captured out of which seven specimens were collected. Historically this species has been recorded to be present on Narcondam Island, North Central Andaman Island, and Port Blair ( Andersen, 1906, 1918; Sinha, 1973). Aul et al. (2014) reported the sightings of this species from North Reef Island, Smith Island, Gandhinagar, Chalis Ek, and Saddle Peak in North Andaman Islands; Interview Island and Baratang Island in Middle Andaman Islands; and Little Andaman Island. This species seemed to be common (vide Aul et al., 2014) on the Andaman Islands before the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. We could not detect the species from other locations reported earlier and so assume that the tsunami had a negative effect on this species. Where the species is present we found their numbers to be very few – ranging from 50 to 200 individuals. R. cognatus is represented by two subspecies on the islands, the nominotypic subspecies, R. c. cognatus , is from the South Andaman Islands, with its type locality recorded as Port Blair ( Andersen, 1906), while the second, smaller ( Sinha, 1973) subspecies, R. c. famulus, is from the North and Middle Islands, with its type locality recorded as North Central Island ( Andersen, 1918).