21 August 2020

New bentwing from SE Africa

A new species, Miniopterus wilsoni, has been described from Mozambique and Malawi. The most accessible place to see it appears to be Zomba Plateau, where it is the only Miniopterus known. The paper also shows that M. occidentalis is a species separate from M. minor; you can see the former in Chutes de Lukia near Kinshasa and the latter in coastal forests of Kenya and Tanzania, notably Arabuko-Sokoke.
I’ve only seen one new mammal species this year so far, but my life list has grown by something like 40 species, even though I am always careful about accepting proposed splits 🙂

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2 Comments

  • 21 August 2020
    Paul Carter

    Thanks Vladimir for posting. The paper notes “the western subspecies occidentalis PROBABLY a separate
    species (Juste and Ibañez, 1992)”; (my caps inserted) so probably too soon to regard it as a separate species.

    • 21 August 2020
      Vladimir Dinets

      They also found considerable differences in measurements. Pity they didn’t include it in molecular analysis.

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