Cynopterus brachyotis (Müller, 1838), Lesser

Srinivasulu, Chelmala, Srinivasulu, Aditya, Srinivasulu, Bhargavi, Gopi, Asad, Dar, Tauseef Hamid, Bates, Paul J. J., Rossiter, Stephen J. & Jones, Gareth, 2017, Recent surveys of bats from the Andaman Islands, India: diversity, distribution, and echolocation characteristics, Acta Chiropterologica 19 (2), pp. 419-437 : 426-427

2. Cynopterus brachyotis (Müller, 1838)

Lesser Short-nosed Fruit Bat

New records

North Andaman Islands: Diglipur and Ramnagar; Middle Andaman Islands: Devpur and Nayadera; South Andaman Islands: Dignabad.

Previous records

North Andaman Islands: Chalis Ek (HZM); South Andaman Islands: Mount Harriet (ZSIK).

Comments

Cynopterus brachysoma Dobson, 1871 , was earlier synonymised under C. sphinx by Bates and Harrison, (1997). However, following Hill (1967), Simmons (2005) and Srinivasulu and Srinivasulu (2012) we consider this taxon as a subspecies of C. brachyotis . Cynopterus brachysoma was described based on an adult female collected by F. Stoliczka on South Andaman Island in 1871 and was later reported from the Andaman Islands by Dobson (1873, 1876) and Anderson (1881). Twenty individuals were captured of which five were collected. Aul et al. (2014) reported the sightings of this species from nine locations in the Andaman Islands. On two occasions we collected both C. sphinx and C. brachyotis at the same time. A detailed study is currently being undertaken to compare this species with C. sphinx on the islands.

We feel that this genus, presently represented on the islands by C. sphinx and C. brachyotis , to be more diverse than is currently known. During the present study, we observed numerous variations among the voucher specimens of this genus, and preliminary analysis of the cytochrome oxydase I (COI) gene and morphological studies on these specimens suggest that the taxonomy of Andamanese Cynopterus must be further resolved.