''Chaerephon jobimena'', commonly known as the black and red free-tailed bat,
is a species of
bat in the family
Molossidae. It is
endemic
Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found els ...
to western
Madagascar
Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...
.
With a forearm length of 45 to 48 mm (1.8 to 1.9 in),
''C. jobimena'' is somewhat larger than other Malagasy bats assigned to ''
Chaerephon'', but similar in size to ''Tadarida aegyptiaca'' (see below).
Habitat
The known habitats of the species are
tropical dry deciduous forest and
spiny forest at altitudes from 50 to 870 m. It roosts in trees as well as in houses and other buildings, but has not been found to commonly roost in caves.
Taxonomy
Although currently listed as a member of the genus ''
Chaerephon'', whose members it resembles morphologically, ''C. jobimenas closest relatives based on molecular evidence are ''
Tadarida aegyptiaca'' of Africa and southwest Asia, and ''
Tadarida brasiliensis'' of the Americas, which form a clade believed to be about 9.8 million years old. ''C. jobimena'' and ''T. aegyptiaca'' were found to be
sister species
In phylogenetics, a sister group or sister taxon, also called an adelphotaxon, comprises the closest relative(s) of another given unit in an evolutionary tree.
Definition
The expression is most easily illustrated by a cladogram:
Taxon A and ...
.
The morphological resemblance thus apparently represents
parallel
Parallel is a geometric term of location which may refer to:
Computing
* Parallel algorithm
* Parallel computing
* Parallel metaheuristic
* Parallel (software), a UNIX utility for running programs in parallel
* Parallel Sysplex, a cluster of I ...
or
convergent evolution. While sequence data indicates that ''Chaerephon'', ''
Mops
MOPS (3-(''N''-morpholino)propanesulfonic acid) is a buffer introduced in the 1960s, one of the twenty Good's buffers. It is a structural analog to MES, and like MES, its structure contains a morpholine ring. HEPES is a similar pH buffering ...
'' and ''
Tadarida'' are not
monophyletic
In cladistics for a group of organisms, monophyly is the condition of being a clade—that is, a group of taxa composed only of a common ancestor (or more precisely an ancestral population) and all of its lineal descendants. Monophyletic ...
taxa, the grouping of ''Chaerephon'' minus ''C. jobimena'' plus ''Mops'' was found to be monophyletic.
Conservation status
Although the species is not common, it has an extensive range that includes the vicinity of four protected areas, and is not believed to be dependent on undisturbed forest habitat. For these reasons, it has been categorized as being of '
least concern
A least-concern species is a species that has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as evaluated as not being a focus of species conservation because the specific species is still plentiful in the wild. Th ...
' by the
IUCN. Subsistence hunting may be a threat in southern Madagascar.
See also
*
List of bats of Madagascar
References
{{Taxonbar, from=Q2280051
J
Bats of Africa
Endemic fauna of Madagascar
Mammals of Madagascar
Mammals described in 2004