Eumops perotis (Schinz, 1821)

Rodríguez-San Pedro, Annia, Pacheco, Jaime A., Beltrán, Clemente, Allendes, Juan Luis & Ugarte-Núñez, Joaquín A., 2023, Eumops perotis (Schinz, 1821) (Chiroptera, Molossidae): a new genus and species for Chile revealed by acoustic surveys, Mammalia (Warsaw, Poland) 87 (3), pp. 283-287 : 283-286

Based on acoustic surveys, we report here the first record of a species of this genus from Chile, the Western mastiff bat Eumops perotis .

This species is known from adjacent countries like Peru, Argentina, and Bolivia, and is also present in Brazil, Paraguay, Ecuador, Colombia, México, and the southwestern United States, where it is found in arid regions, farmland, and urban areas from 60 m below sea level in California to elevations of c. 3200 in the Peruvian Andes ( Velikov 2019).

The Western mastiff bat seems to be a common species in southern Peru ( Pacheco et al. 2020; Ugarte-Núñez 2020) where the bioclimatic conditions and landscape characteristics are similar to those found in the extreme north of Chile ( Luebert and Pliscoff 2017). Thus, its record in the Arica and Parinacota region was not unexpected, as it recently occurred with other species like N. arusipinosus and P. davisoni ( Ossa et al. 2018; RodrÍguez-San Pedro et al. 2022). E. perotis likely uses rock crevices in the cliff walls for roosting in the coastal valleys of the Arica and Parinacota region, as has it been observed for Mormopterus kalinowskii ( Mann 1978) . The new record presented here extends substantially the known geographic distribution of E. perotis up to 640 km southward from the closest record in Chocavento (Arequipa department, Peru) and represents the southernmost record of the species in the Pacific coast of South America. This finding also represents the first record of the genus Eumops from Chile, increasing the bat diversity of the country to 17 species. The recent additions to the Chilean bat fauna such as Histiotus laephotis , Promops davisoni , Nyctinomops aurispinosus , and Myotis arescens ( Novaes et al. 2022; Ossa et al. 2014, 2018; RodrÍguez-San Pedro et al. 2022) along with this new record of E. perotis emphasize the deficiency of information on bats and the need of additional surveys in Chile.

Figures

Figure 1: Distribution map of Eumops perotis: (A) geographic range according to Velikov (2019), (B) southernmost record known in the Pacific coast of South America (black star) until the present study, and new records in the Arica and Parinacota region, Chile (red stars).

Figure 2: Sonogram of echolocation call of Eumops perotis recorded in the Arica and Parinacota region, Chile.

Figure 3: Discriminant function analysis (DFA) used in the classification of the echolocation calls of Eumops perotis.