Plecotus kolombatovici, Dulic, 1980

Sachanowicz, Konrad, Ciechanowski, Mateusz, Rachwald, Alek & Piskorski, Michał, 2015, Overview of bat species reported in Albania with the first country records for eight species, Journal of Natural History 50, pp. 513-521 : 518

Plecotus kolombatovici

Pishkash II (location same as above), 28 September 2005, 1 sexually active ♂ ad. netted at the entrance of a small cave in a limestone gorge. The morphological identification of this species was confirmed by genetic analysis (A. Kiefer, pers. comm.).

The two records of bats from the genus Plecotus ( Lamani 1970) could not be assigned to any particular species because of the lack of a detailed description and measurements. For the supposed Pl. kolombatovici record from the Treni Cave, at the Micro Prespa Lake in Albania (24–25 September 2012), no evidence has been provided to support the species identification and exclusion of other Plecotus species ( Scheffler et al. 2013). Plecotus kolombatovici has one of the smallest geographic ranges among the European bats; it has only been confirmed in Greece and along the Adriatic coast of Croatia ( Đulić 1980; Spitzenberger et al. 2006). The supposed records from Bosnia and Herzegovina are based on external and cranial measurements ( Đulić 1980; Červený and Kryštufek 1988) and apparently require confirmation with genetic methods. This new Albanian record indicates a wider occurrence of this species in the southwestern Balkans and its syntopic presence with Pl. austriacus .