''Miniopterus newtoni'' is a species of bat that 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 ...

São Tomé and Príncipe São Tomé and Príncipe (; pt, São Tomé e Príncipe (); English: " Saint Thomas and Prince"), officially the Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe ( pt, República Democrática de São Tomé e Príncipe), is a Portuguese-speaking i ...

Taxonomy

''Miniopterus newtoni'' was described as a new species in 1889 by Portuguese zoologist

José Vicente Barbosa du Bocage José Vicente Barbosa du Bocage (2 May 1823 – 3 November 1907) was a Portuguese zoologist and politician. He was the curator of Zoology at the Museu Nacional de Lisboa in Lisbon. He published numerous works on mammals, birds, and fishes. In ...

. The

holotype A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of seve ...

had been collected by Portuguese naturalist Francisco Newton. In the third edition of ''

Mammal Species of the World ''Mammal Species of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference'' is a standard reference work in mammalogy giving descriptions and bibliographic data for the known species of mammals. It is now in its third edition, published in late 2005, ...

'', Simmons et al. considered ''M. newtoni'' as a subspecies of the least long-fingered bat, ''M. minor''. However, in 2007, a mitochondrial DNA analysis rejected the assertion that ''M. minor'' and ''M. newtoni'' were

synonymous A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words ''begin'', ''start'', ''commence'', and ''initiate'' are all ...

. Juste et al. published that ''M. newtoni'' and ''M. minor'' had a

genetic distance Genetic distance is a measure of the genetic divergence between species or between populations within a species, whether the distance measures time from common ancestor or degree of differentiation. Populations with many similar alleles have s ...

significant enough to regard each as separate species.

Description

It has a forearm length of approximately .

Range and habitat

''M. newtoni'' is

to the nation of

, where it has only been documented on

São Tomé Island São Tomé Island, at , is the largest island of São Tomé and Príncipe and is home in May 2018 to about 193,380 or 96% of the nation's population. The island is divided into six districts. It is located 2 km (1¼ miles) north of the eq ...

. It has been documented in both forested habitat and

plantation A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. Th ...

Conservation

As of 2019, it is evaluated as a

data deficient A data deficient (DD) species is one which has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as offering insufficient information for a proper assessment of conservation status to be made. This does not necessarily ...

species by the IUCN. It meets the criteria for this classification due to the lack of information on its extent of occurrence and threats it may be facing.

References

{{taxonbar, from=Q1924251 Endemic fauna of São Tomé Island Mammals described in 1889 Miniopteridae Bats of Africa