Wollaston's roundleaf bat (''Hipposideros wollastoni'') is a species of

bat Bats are flying mammals of the order Chiroptera (). With their forelimbs adapted as wings, they are the only mammals capable of true and sustained flight. Bats are more agile in flight than most birds, flying with their very long spread-out ...

in the family

Hipposideridae The Hipposideridae are a family (biology), family of bats commonly known as the Old World leaf-nosed bats. While it has often been seen as a subfamily, Hipposiderinae, of the family Rhinolophidae, it is now more generally classified as its own fa ...

. It is found in West Papua,

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...

and

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean n ...

. It was named after the explorer Sandy Wollaston.

Taxonomy and etymology

It was described as a new species in 1913 by British zoologist

Oldfield Thomas Michael Rogers Oldfield Thomas (21 February 1858 – 16 June 1929) was a British zoologist. Career Thomas worked at the Natural History Museum, London, Natural History Museum on mammals, describing about 2,000 new species and subspecies for ...

. The

eponym An eponym is a noun after which or for which someone or something is, or is believed to be, named. Adjectives derived from the word ''eponym'' include ''eponymous'' and ''eponymic''. Eponyms are commonly used for time periods, places, innovati ...

for the

species name In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, both of which use Latin grammatical forms, altho ...

"''wollastoni''" is A. F. R. Wollaston. The

holotype A holotype (Latin: ''holotypus'') is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of s ...

used to describe this species was collected during one of Wollaston's expeditions to

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; , fossilized , also known as Papua or historically ) is the List of islands by area, world's second-largest island, with an area of . Located in Melanesia in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is ...

Description

In his initial description of the species, Thomas noted that it was similar in appearance to the Fly River roundleaf bat, ''Hipposideros muscinus''. It differs from the Fly River roundleaf bat in that its posterior

nose-leaf A nose-leaf, or leaf nose, is an often large, lance-shaped nose, found in bats of the Phyllostomidae, Hipposideridae, and Rhinolophidae families. Because these bats Animal echolocation, echolocate nasally, this nose-leaf is thought to serve a role ...

has a "peculiar duplication" behind it. Its forearm length is approximately long. Its head and body is , while its tail is long. Its ears are long and wide.

Range and status

This species is only known from the island of

, in both

and

. It has been documented from above sea level. It has been found in

montane forests Montane ecosystems are found on the slopes of mountains. The alpine climate in these regions strongly affects the ecosystem because temperatures fall as elevation increases, causing the ecosystem to stratify. This stratification is a crucial f ...

, oak forests, and

secondary forest A secondary forest (or second-growth forest) is a forest or woodland area which has regenerated through largely natural processes after human-caused Disturbance (ecology), disturbances, such as Logging, timber harvest or agriculture clearing, or ...

s. It is currently evaluated as

least concern A least-concern species is a species that has been evaluated and categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as not being a focus of wildlife conservation because the specific species is still plentiful in the wil ...

by the

IUCN The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. Founded in 1948, IUCN has become the global authority on the status ...

—its lowest conservation priority.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q1831018 Hipposideros Bats of Oceania Mammals of Papua New Guinea Mammals of Western New Guinea Mammals described in 1913 Taxa named by Oldfield Thomas Taxonomy articles created by Polbot Bats of New Guinea