Megadermatidae, or false vampire bats, are a family 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 ...

s found from central

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...

, eastwards through southern

Asia Asia ( , ) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which ...

, and into

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

. They are relatively large bats, ranging from 6.5 cm to 14 cm in head-body length. They have large eyes, very large ears and a prominent

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 ...

. They have a wide membrane between the hind legs, or

uropatagium The patagium (: patagia) is a membranous body part that assists an animal in obtaining lift when gliding or flying. The structure is found in extant and extinct groups of flying and gliding animals including bats, theropod dinosaurs (including b ...

, but no tail. Many species are a drab brown in color, but some are white, bluish-grey or even olive-green, helping to camouflage them against their preferred roosting environments. They are primarily insectivorous, but will also eat a wide range of small vertebrates.

Description

False vampire bats are relatively large, with combined head and body lengths that range from . Their forearm lengths range from . They all lack tails. The

ghost bat The ghost bat (''Macroderma gigas'') is a species of bat found in northern Australia. The species is the only Australian bat that preys on large vertebrates – birds, reptiles and other mammals – which they detect using acute sight and heari ...

is the largest member of the family. All the species have very large ears with divided tragi. They have long nose-leaves. All species are similar in that they lack upper

incisor Incisors (from Latin ''incidere'', "to cut") are the front teeth present in most mammals. They are located in the premaxilla above and on the mandible below. Humans have a total of eight (two on each side, top and bottom). Opossums have 18, wher ...

s, though not all species have the same dental formulae. The lesser false vampire bat and greater false vampire bat have a dental formula of , while the ghost bat, heart-nosed bat, Thongaree's disc-nosed bat, and yellow-winged bat have a dental formula of .

Biology and ecology

These species are collectively called false vampire due to the old misconception that they were sanguivorous like the true

vampire bat Vampire bats, members of the subfamily Desmodontinae, are Phyllostomidae, leaf-nosed bats currently found in Central and South America. Their food source is the blood of other animals, a dietary trait called hematophagy. Three extant bat species ...

s. The ghost bat, heart-nosed bat, lesser false vampire bat, and greater false vampire bat feed on insects and small vertebrates; the yellow-winged bat and Thongaree's disc-nosed bat are likely fully

insectivorous A robber fly eating a hoverfly An insectivore is a carnivorous animal or plant which eats insects. An alternative term is entomophage, which can also refer to the human practice of eating insects. The first vertebrate insectivores we ...

. The heart-nosed bat, greater false vampire bat, and the ghost bat are three of the few bat-eating bats in the world. All species of this family are

nocturnal Nocturnality is a ethology, behavior in some non-human animals characterized by being active during the night and sleeping during the day. The common adjective is "nocturnal", versus diurnality, diurnal meaning the opposite. Nocturnal creatur ...

, with the exception of the yellow-winged bat which is sometimes active in daylight.

Systematics

Megadermatidae is a family within the

Rhinolophoidea Rhinolophoidea is a superfamily (taxonomy), superfamily of bats. It contains the following families: Craseonycteridae, Hipposideridae, Megadermatidae, Rhinolophidae, Rhinonycteridae, and Rhinopomatidae. It is one of two superfamilies that compris ...

superfamily SUPERFAMILY is a database and search platform of structural and functional annotation for all proteins and genomes. It classifies amino acid sequences into known structural domains, especially into SCOP superfamilies. Domains are functional, str ...

. Genetic analysis shows that it is the most basal member of the superfamily. It is a

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 ...

family of bats, based on genetic analysis. There is confusion about the relationship of species within Megadermatidae. A 2015 study concluded that, while they did not have enough genetic data to fully resolve these relationships, the two ''

Megaderma ''Megaderma'' is a genus of bat in the family Megadermatidae. It contains two living species: * Lesser false vampire bat (''Megaderma spasma'') * Greater false vampire bat (''Megaderma lyra'') ''Megaderma lyra'' has a larger wingspan than ''M ...

'' species should be in separate

genera Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family as used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In binomial nomenclature, the genus name forms the first part of the binomial s ...

. The authors of the 2015 paper suggested that the

greater false vampire bat The greater false vampire bat (''Lyroderma lyra'') is a species of bat in the family Megadermatidae, the false vampire bats. It is native to Asia. It is also known as the Indian false vampire bat or greater false-vampire Description This speci ...

, ''Megaderma lyra'', should be renamed as ''Lyroderma lyra''. The recovered

cladogram A cladogram (from Greek language, Greek ''clados'' "branch" and ''gramma'' "character") is a diagram used in cladistics to show relations among organisms. A cladogram is not, however, an Phylogenetic tree, evolutionary tree because it does not s ...

in the 2015 study had relatively low

posterior probabilities The posterior probability is a type of conditional probability that results from updating the prior probability with information summarized by the likelihood via an application of Bayes' rule. From an epistemological perspective, the posterior ...

, however, underscoring the need for future study to achieve higher resolution. Note that Thongaree's disc-nosed bat, '' Eudiscoderma thongareeae'', was not included in this analysis, as it was not described as a new species until 2015.

Fossil record

Megadermatidae is a relatively old family, appearing in the fossil record as early as 37 million years ago. The earliest known member is '' Saharaderma'' Gunnel, Simons & Seiffert, 2008 from the latest

Eocene The Eocene ( ) is a geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 56 to 33.9 million years ago (Ma). It is the second epoch of the Paleogene Period (geology), Period in the modern Cenozoic Era (geology), Era. The name ''Eocene'' comes ...

of Egypt. In addition, several fossil species in extant genera have been described, including: * ''

Macroderma koppa ''Macroderma koppa'' is a species of bat known from fossil material found in Australia, one of the larger carnivorous megadermatid family of the order Chiroptera. They resembled the modern species ''Macroderma gigas'', known as a false vampire o ...

Hand A hand is a prehensile, multi-fingered appendage located at the end of the forearm or forelimb of primates such as humans, chimpanzees, monkeys, and lemurs. A few other vertebrates such as the Koala#Characteristics, koala (which has two thumb#O ...

, Dawson & Augee, 1988. a fossil species that existed in the

Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch (geology), epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.33 to 2.58 * ''

Macroderma godthelpi ''Macroderma godthelpi'' is a species of bat known from fossil material found in Australia, one of the larger carnivorous megadermatid family of the order Chiroptera. They resembled the modern species ''Macroderma gigas'', known as a false vampi ...

'', Hand, 1985. the earliest and smallest species * ''

Macroderma malugara ''Macroderma malugara'' is a species of bat known from fossil material found in Australia. The name describes a 'good killer' in the local language, and was similar in size and probably habits of the modern ''Macroderma gigas'' (known as the ghos ...

, 1996. *'' Megaderma brailloni'': Discovered in France; dated from the early

. *'' Megaderma gaillardi'': Discovered in France; dated from the mid-

Miocene The Miocene ( ) is the first epoch (geology), geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and mea ...

. *'' Megaderma lugdunensis'': Discovered in France and the Czech Republic; dated from the mid-

. *'' Megaderma jaegeri'': Discovered in Morocco; dated from the mid-

*'' Megaderma vireti'': Discovered in Lissieu, France; dated from the late

. *'' Megaderma mediterraneum'': Discovered in France; dated from the late

Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch (geology), epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.33 to 2.58Megaderma janossyi'': Discovered in Hungary; dated from the early

Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch (geology), epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.33 to 2.58Megaderma watwat'': Discovered in Palestine; dated from the

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( ; referred to colloquially as the ''ice age, Ice Age'') is the geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fin ...

Conservation

All Megadermatidae species are 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 with the exception of the ghost bat, which is vulnerable, and Thongaree's disc-nosed bat, which is

critically endangered An IUCN Red List critically endangered (CR or sometimes CE) species is one that has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as facing an extremely high risk of extinction in the wild. As of December 2023, of t ...

Classification

A list of extant species includes, Family Megadermatidae *Genus ''

Cardioderma The heart-nosed bat (''Cardioderma cor'') is a species of bat in the family Megadermatidae. It is the only species within the genus ''Cardioderma''. It is found in eastern Sudan, north Tanzania, and south Zambia. In an experiment conducted in 20 ...

'' ** Heart-nosed bat, ''Cardioderma cor'' *Genus '' Eudiscoderma'' ** Thongaree's disc-nosed bat, ''Eudiscoderma thongareeae'' *Genus '' Lavia'' ** Yellow-winged bat, ''Lavia frons'' *Genus '' Lyroderma'' **

Greater false vampire bat The greater false vampire bat (''Lyroderma lyra'') is a species of bat in the family Megadermatidae, the false vampire bats. It is native to Asia. It is also known as the Indian false vampire bat or greater false-vampire Description This speci ...

, ''Lyroderma lyra'' *Genus '' Macroderma'' **

Ghost bat The ghost bat (''Macroderma gigas'') is a species of bat found in northern Australia. The species is the only Australian bat that preys on large vertebrates – birds, reptiles and other mammals – which they detect using acute sight and heari ...

, ''Macroderma gigas'' *Genus ''

'' ** Lesser false vampire bat, ''Megaderma spasma''

References

External links

Megadermatidae
{{Taxonbar, from=Q841327 Bat families Extant Rupelian first appearances Taxa named by Harrison Allen