The Seminole bat (''Lasiurus seminolus'') is a species of bat in the family

Vespertilionidae Vespertilionidae is a family of microbats, of the order Chiroptera, flying, insect-eating mammals variously described as the common, vesper, or simple nosed bats. The vespertilionid family is the most diverse and widely distributed of bat famili ...

Taxonomy

The Seminole bat was first described in 1895 by Samuel N. Rhoads. 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 in

Tarpon Springs Tarpon Springs is a city in Pinellas County, Florida, United States. The population was 23,484 at the 2010 census. Tarpon Springs has the highest percentage of Greek Americans of any city in the US. Downtown Tarpon Springs has long been a focal po ...

, Florida in 1892 by William S. Dickinson. Rhoads placed it in the now-defunct genus ''Atalpha'', identifying it as a subspecies of the

eastern red bat The eastern red bat (''Lasiurus borealis'') is a species of microbat in the family Vespertilionidae. Eastern red bats are widespread across eastern North America, with additional records in Bermuda. Taxonomy and etymology It was described in ...

with a scientific name of ''Atalpha borealis seminolus''. In 1932, the name ''Lasiurus seminolus'' was applied to the taxon for the first time by Earl Lincoln Poole.

Description

The Seminole bat is often confused with the red bat. This is due to the coloring of the Seminole bat, which is a mahogany color with a frosted look due to white tipped dorsal hairs. Coloring is not sexually dimorphic, meaning that males and females are similar in color. Average weight is around 12 grams with females being larger than males.

Diet

Seminole bats are

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

s. Insectivores are animals that feed primarily on insects. They have been found to eat relatively large amount of Hymenoptera (ants, bees and wasps),

Coleoptera Beetles are insects that form the order Coleoptera (), in the superorder Endopterygota. Their front pair of wings are hardened into wing-cases, elytra, distinguishing them from most other insects. The Coleoptera, with about 400,000 describ ...

(beetles), Lepidoptera (moths). They have also been shown to eat smaller amounts of

Homoptera Homoptera is a suborder of order Hemiptera that is considered by some taxonomists to be paraphyletic, and therefore deprecated (obsolete). It was therefore split into the suborders Sternorrhyncha, Auchenorrhyncha, and Coleorrhyncha. The earlier w ...

(cicadas) and Diptera (flies).

Distribution

The Seminole bat is found in the

Southeastern United States The Southeastern United States, also referred to as the American Southeast or simply the Southeast, is a geographical region of the United States. It is located broadly on the eastern portion of the southern United States and the southern po ...

. This includes Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina and parts of Texas, Tennessee, Arkansas and North Carolina. There are also records of Seminole bats as far as Mexico. It is a migratory species, living along the

Gulf Coast The Gulf Coast of the United States, also known as the Gulf South, is the coastline along the Southern United States where they meet the Gulf of Mexico. The coastal states that have a shoreline on the Gulf of Mexico are Texas, Louisiana, Missis ...

, in the Carolinas, and southern Arkansas during the winter. In the summer, they migrate as far north as Missouri and Kentucky. In 2015, it was documented for the first time in northwestern North Carolina. The bats prefer to live in forested areas. In winter months they are found to use leaf litter and Spanish moss as insulation in their roost sites. Spanish moss is also thought to be an important factor in seminole bat environments year round. and is believed to be a limiting factor in distribution of these bats.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q305676 Lasiurus Bats of Mexico Bats of the United States Bat, Seminole Mammals described in 1895 Taxonomy articles created by Polbot