Yangochiroptera, or Vespertilioniformes, is a suborder of Chiroptera that includes most of the microbat families, except the Rhinopomatidae, Rhinolophidae,

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 ...

, Craseonycteridae and Megadermatidae. These other families, plus the megabats, are seen as part of another suborder, the

Yinpterochiroptera The Yinpterochiroptera (or Pteropodiformes) is a suborder of the Chiroptera, which includes taxa formerly known as megabats and five of the microbat families: Rhinopomatidae, Rhinolophidae, Hipposideridae, Craseonycteridae, and Megadermatidae. T ...

. All bats in Yangochiroptera use laryngeal echolocation (LE), which involves the use of high-frequency sounds to detect prey and avoid obstacles. The rationale for the Yangochiroptera

taxon In biology, a taxon (back-formation from ''taxonomy''; : taxa) is a group of one or more populations of an organism or organisms seen by taxonomists to form a unit. Although neither is required, a taxon is usually known by a particular name and ...

is primarily based on molecular genetics data. The Yangochiroptera/

classification remains a relatively recent proposal, which challenges the traditional view that megabats and microbats form

monophyletic In biological cladistics for the classification of organisms, monophyly is the condition of a taxonomic grouping being a clade – that is, a grouping of organisms which meets these criteria: # the grouping contains its own most recent co ...

groups by claiming that the superfamily Rhinolophoidea is more closely related to Old World fruit bats than other microbats. Further studies are being conducted, using both molecular and morphological

cladistic Cladistics ( ; from Ancient Greek 'branch') is an approach to biological classification in which organisms are categorized in groups ("clades") based on hypotheses of most recent common ancestry. The evidence for hypothesized relationships is ...

methodology, to assess the merit of this alternative view of bat

evolution Evolution is the change in the heritable Phenotypic trait, characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, re ...

. The term "Yangochiroptera" was apparently proposed in 1984 by Karl F. Koopman. As an alternative to the subordinal names Yinpterochiroptera and Yangochiroptera, some researchers use the terms Pteropodiformes and Vespertilioniformes. Under this new proposed nomenclature, Vespertilioniformes is the suborder that would replace Yangochiroptera.

Classification

Suborder Yangochiroptera (Vespertilioniformes) *Family Cistugidae (wing-gland bats) *Superfamily

Emballonuroidea Emballonuroidea is a Taxonomic rank, superfamily of bats containing two families: Emballonuridae and Nycteridae. It is one of three superfamilies in the suborder Yangochiroptera, the others being Noctilionoidea and Vespertilionoidea. Emballonuri ...

**Family Emballonuridae (sac-winged bats) **Family Nycteridae (hollow-faced bats) *Family

Furipteridae Furipteridae is family of bats, allying two genera of single species, '' Amorphochilus schnablii'' (smoky bat) and the type '' Furipterus horrens'' (thumbless bat). They are found in Central and South America and are closely related to the ba ...

(smoky bats) *Family Miniopteridae (bent-winged or long winged bats) *Family Molossidae (free-tailed bats) *Family

Mormoopidae The family Mormoopidae contains bats known generally as mustached bats, ghost-faced bats, and naked-backed bats. They are found in the Americas from the Southwestern United States to Southeastern Brazil. They are distinguished by the presen ...

(ghost-faced bats) *Family

Mystacinidae __NOTOC__ Mystacinidae is a family of unusual bats, the New Zealand short-tailed bats. There is one living genus, '' Mystacina'', with two species, one of which could have possibly become extinct in the 1960s. They are medium-sized bats, about ...

(New Zealand short-tailed bats) *Family

Myzopodidae ''Myzopoda'' is a genus of bat, the only member of the monotypic family (biology), family Myzopodidae, with two described species. Myzopodidae is unique as the only family of bats currently endemic to Madagascar. However, fossil discoveries indic ...

(sucker-footed bats) *Family Natalidae (funnel-eared bats) *Family Noctilionidae (bulldog bats) *Family Phyllostomidae (leaf-nosed bats) *Family

Thyropteridae Disk-winged bats are a small group of bats of the family Thyropteridae and genus ''Thyroptera''. They are found in Central and South America, usually in moist tropical rain forests. It is a very small family, consisting of a single genus with f ...

(disk-winged bats) *Family Vespertilionidae (vesper bats)

References

* * {{Taxonbar, from=Q10862877 Bat taxonomy Mammal suborders