Hill's roundleaf bat (''Hipposideros edwardshilli'') 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 ...

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found only 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 foun ...

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 ...

Taxonomy

Hill's roundleaf bat was described as a new species in 1993 by

Tim Flannery Timothy Fridtjof Flannery (born 28 January 1956) is an Australian mammalogist, palaeontologist, environmentalist, conservationist, explorer, author, science communicator Science communication encompasses a wide range of activities tha ...

and Donald Colgan. 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 ...

had been collected in the

Bewani Mountains The Bewani Mountains form a mountain range in northwestern Papua New Guinea. Together with the Torricelli Mountains and Prince Alexander Mountains it forms the North Coastal Range of Papua New Guinea.

near Imonda Station in 1990 by P. German and L. Seri. 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 ...

"''edwardshilli''" was British mammalogist

John Edwards Hill John Edwards Hill (11 June 1928 – 6 May 1997) was a British mammalogist who described 24 species and 26 subspecies during his career. Early life and education Hill was born on 11 June 1928 in the small hamlet of Colemans Hatch in East Sussex, ...

, "in recognition of his outstanding contributions to bat taxonomy".

Description

Individuals have a forearm length of and a very short tail length of . It differs from all other ''Hipposideros'' species in its two club-like projections on its

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 ...

Range and habitat

Hill's roundleaf bat is

to Papua New Guinea in Oceania. It has been documented at a narrow range of elevations from above sea level.

Conservation

As of 2021, it is evaluated as a

vulnerable species A vulnerable species is a species which has been Conservation status, categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as being threatened species, threatened with extinction unless the circumstances that are threatened species, ...

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 ...

. It meets the criteria for this designation because it has a potentially limited habitat for roosting. Its area of occupancy is possibly less than . Habitat loss is ongoing through deforestation. It has not been documented since its description in 1993.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hipposideros edwardshilli Hipposideros Bats of Oceania Endemic fauna of Papua New Guinea Mammals of Papua New Guinea Mammals described in 1993 Taxonomy articles created by Polbot Taxa named by Tim Flannery Bats of New Guinea