Ectophylla macconnelli (Thomas)

Simmons, Nancy B. & Voss, Robert S., 1998, The mammals of Paracou, French Guiana, a Neotropical lowland rainforest fauna. Part 1, Bats, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 237, pp. 1-219 : 116-119

Ectophylla macconnelli (Thomas)

VOUCHER MATERIAL: 9 females (AMNH *267281, *267537, *267538, *267556, *267558, *267559; MNHN *1995.1181, *1995.1182, *1995.1183) and 4 males (AMNH *267557, *267562, *268539; MNHN *1995.1184); see table 43 for measurements.

IDENTIFICATION: We consulted descriptions and measurements of Ectophylla macconnelli provided by Goodwin and Greenhall (1962), Swanepoel and Genoways (1979), Williams and Genoways (1980a), Brosset and Charles­ Dominique (1990), and Kunz and Pena (1992). Two subspecies are currently recognized, of which the nominate form occurs throughout most of the humid Neotropical lowlands, including the Guianas (Koopman, 1994).

Our Paracou series conforms in all respects to previous descriptions of Ectophylla macconnelli except that of Brosset and Charles­Dominique (1990), who reported unusually high values for length of the maxillary toothrow (6.7–7.4 mm) in their French Guianan material. By contrast, the observed range for this measurement in our series (5.61–6.09 mm) falls within the range previously reported by other authors (5.5–6.6 mm). Because the other external and craniodental measurements reported by Brosset and Charles­Dominique are not aberrant, we presume that their maxillary toothrow measurements were erroneously reported.

FIELD OBSERVATIONS: We caught 13 Ectophylla macconnelli at Paracou, of which only 1 was taken in a mistnet; the remaining 12 were caught at roosts. Our single mistnet capture was at ground level in swampy primary forest.

We found three roosting groups of Ectophylla macconnelli , all of which inhabited leaf­tents (fig. 47) made from the bifid terminal leaflets of fronds of young understory palms provisionally identified as Astrocaryum sciophilum . In all construction details that we noted, these tents exactly resembled those described above in the accounts for Rhinophylla pumilio and Artibeus cinereus . All three roosts were in well­drained primary forest. One roosting group of seven bats, col­ lected in its entirety, consisted of two adult males and five adult females. Another entire group of three consisted of one adult male and two adult females.

Our roost observations, together with those reported by Foster (1992) and Charles­ Dominique (1993), suggest that Ectophylla macconnelli regularly inhabits tents manufactured from the leaves of Astrocaryum palms. 12 Because the undersurfaces of Astrocaryum leaves are characteristically whitish ( Henderson et al., 1995), we agree with Hingston (1932) that the unsually pale fur of

12 Emmons (1990) was apparently the first to report that Ectophylla macconnelli inhabits palm­leaf tents, but she did not identify the host plant. Roosts have been reported in the foliage of other palms (and aroids), but multiple independent observations of occupied bifid tents in Astrocaryum spp. from opposite ends of Amazonia suggest that this genus is favored by Ectophylla macconnelli . Emmons’ (1990, 1997) suggestion that E. macconnelli sometimes inhabits hollow trees was based on Handley’s (1976: 30) report of one individual ‘‘found roosting in a tree.’’ However, the original field record for the specimen in question (USNM 405185) notes ‘‘shot in tree after frightened up‘‘—the bat having presumably been dislodged from an unobserved roost in the undergrowth. All other published accounts (including Beebe [1925], Hingston [1932], Charles­Dominique [1993], and Kunz et al. [1994] in addition to references cited by Foster [1992]) explicitly identify foliage as the roosting substrate of E. macconnelli .

E. macconnelli is correlated with the background color of its typical roosts, perhaps making the bats less conspicuous to diurnal predators.