Hipposideros jonesi Hayman, 1947

Decher, Jan, Hoffmann, Anke, Schaer, Juliane, N Orris, Ryan W., Kadjo, Blaise, Astrin, Jonas, Monadjem, Ara & Hutterer, Rainer, 2015, Bat diversity in the Simandou Mountain Range of Guinea, with the description of a new white-winged vespertilionid, Acta Chiropterologica 17 (2), pp. 255-282 : 265

Hipposideros jonesi Hayman, 1947

New material

ZFMK 2008.0286 and 0287, ♀♀, W1, 25 February 2008 ; ZFMK 2008.0285 , ♂, OU, 3 March 2008 .

Six individuals of this large-eared species were captured in the W1 ravine forest, one in the submontane savannah on the ridge at OU, and one in a net placed in front of boulders near submontane forest at PF. During the 2002 RAP just one individual was recorded from high elevation at W2 (Fahr and Ebigbo, 2004). The species is known from the Fouta Djallon region (Weber and Fahr, 2007 b) and from central parts of Guinea (Eisentraut and Knorr, 1957; Konstantinov et al., 2000). This species is restricted to West Africa where it is known from a number of scattered localities ( Rosevear, 1965; Fahr, 2013 b). The distribution of this bat is closely tied to the availability of caves or disused mine tunnels. At Simandou, H. jonesi most likely roosts in small caves or crevices in cliffs at the top of the ravine, possibly all the way to forested hilltops such as the Foko site. Whereas all of our captures seemed to be of a grey-brown colour phase, both Eisentraut and Knorr (1957) and Konstantinov et al. (2000) recorded capturing brown-red (‘yellow’), grey-brown (‘grey’) and intermediate colour phases. The female from OU captured on 25 February 2008 carried an embryo of 21 mm crown-rump length. Konstantinov et al. (2000) recorded one pregnant female in July.

Conservation status

Near Threatened. Population trend is decreasing due to its dependency on caves ( IUCN, 2015).