Oligotomus australis MacGillivray in Iredale, 1937

Parnaby, Harry E., Ingleby, Sandy & Divljan, Anja, 2017, Type Specimens of Non-fossil Mammals in the Australian Museum, Sydney, Records of the Australian Museum 69 (5), pp. 277-420 : 405

Oligotomus australis MacGillivray in Iredale, 1937

Aust. Zool. 9(1): 45. (12 November 1937).

Common name. Greater Broadnosed bat.

Current name. Scoteanax rueppellii ( Peters, 1866) , following Kitchener & Caputi (1985).

Type material. A syntype series might include a female specimen obtained in February 1866, as described by MacGillivray from the Clarence River region, north eastern NSW. It might also include an unspecified number of specimens sent to the MV, and possibly any Scoteanax that were misidentified as Vespertilio macropus by Krefft (1864a). We have not attempted to locate possible syntypes in the AM Collection.

Type locality. Clarence River region, north eastern NSW, Australia.

Comments. Iredale (1937) published extracts of notebooks written by John MacGillivray and his letters to E. P. Ramsay in 1865–66 that included a notebook description of a new species and genus— Oligotomus australis —along with drawings of the species (not reproduced by Iredale, 1937). The description was pasted into MacGillivray’s notebook, apparently after a letter dated July 1865. Iredale did not comment on the likely identity of this name, later placed in the synonymy of Scoteanax rueppellii by Kitchener & Caputi (1985). MacGillivray stated that his proposed new genus Oligotomus was tentative, suspecting that it might belong in the genus Nycticejus . MacGillivray stated that “Previously had sent some [bats] to Melbourne [McCoy Museum of Victoria], including numerous specimens of a largish one not belonging to any recorded Australian genus … They had it previously in the Sydney Museum [= AM] marked and published in the catalogue [ Krefft 1864a] as Vespertilio macropus [= Myotis macropus ], a bat to which it bears neither generic nor specific resemblance” ( Iredale, 1937: 46). Krefft (1871d) evidently recognized this taxon as Nycticejus australis , commenting that he did not believe there were any endemic Australian bat genera. Krefft’s publication of the name is a nomen nudum because he did not provide a description. MacGillivray’s description of a forearm length of 2.1 inches (= 53 mm) and “upper incisors … only two in number and not four” equates to Scoteanax .