Lophostoma silvicolum d’Orbigny, 1836

Velazco, Paúl M., Voss, Robert S., Fleck, David W. & Simmons, Nancy B., 2021, Mammalian Diversity And Matses Ethnomammalogy In Amazonian Peru Part 4: Bats, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2021 (451), pp. 1-201 : 72-74

Lophostoma silvicolum d’Orbigny, 1836

Figures 17B , 18

VOUCHER MATERIAL (TOTAL = 26): Estación Biológica Madre Selva (MUSM 32009), Jenaro Herrera (AMNH 278475, 278503; CEBIOMAS 102; MUSM 873, 5937), Nuevo San Juan (AMNH 272746, 272800, 272801, 272829, 272833, 273074, 273087; MUSM 13272–13276, 15283–15285), Orosa (AMNH 73721, 74101, 74102), Quebrada Blanco (MUSM 21176, 21177); see table 32 for measurements.

UNVOUCHERED OBSERVATIONS: One individual of Lophostoma silvicolum was captured at Divisor during the Sierra del Divisor Rapid Biological Inventory (Jorge and Velazco, 2006). During the Yavarí Rapid Biological Inventory, one individual of L. silvicolum was captured at Quebrada Curacinha, and two others were captured at Quebrada Limera (Escobedo, 2003).

IDENTIFICATION: Lophostoma silvicolum is distinguished from other congeners by the following combination of characteristics: large size (forearm> 45 mm, greatest length of skull> 24 mm), brownish to grayish ventral fur, postauricular patches absent, forearm naked, strong indentation present on the lingual cingulum of each upper canine, M1 hypocone moderately to well developed, and second lower premolar aligned with toothrow in occlusal view (Velazco and Gardner, 2012; López-Baucells et al., 2018). Descriptions and measurements of L. silvicolum were provided by Goodwin (1942), Husson (1962, 1978), Davis and Carter (1978), Swanepoel and Genoways (1979), Genoways and Williams (1980), Medellín and Arita (1989), Brosset and Charles-Dominique (1990), Simmons and Voss (1998), Baker et al. (2004), Lim et al. (2005), Velazco and Cadenillas (2011), Velazco and Gardner (2012), Smith et al. (2012), and Velazco and Patterson (2019). Three subspecies are currently recognized: L. s. centralis (eastern Honduras to Costa Rica), L. s. laephotis (Guianas to the lower Amazon basin of Brazil), and L. s. silvicolum ( Panama southward throughout most of the humid-tropical lowlands of South America) (Williams and Genoways, 2008; Velazco and Cadenillas, 2011).

Velazco and Cadenillas (2011) analyzed cytochrome b sequences from all Lophostoma species and found that L. silvicolum sequences grouped into three clades. Lophostoma silvicolum was paraphyletic in their cytochrome b tree, with L. evotis sister to a clade of L. silvicolum that contained specimens from Panama, Venezuela, eastern Ecuador, and eastern Peru. Cytochrome b sequence divergence among the various lineages of L. silvicolum and L. evotis ranged from 3.7 to 6.3%. However, those authors examined approximately 300 specimens of L. silvicolum from throughout its distribution and could not find any clear pattern of qualitative-morphological or morphometric variation that matched any of the three molecular clades or any of the traditionally recognized subspecies. Given these findings, we recommend against taxonomic changes (or recognition of subspecies) pending analyses of nuclear markers in this complex.

Ascorra et al. (1993), Fleck et al. (2002), and Velazco and Cadenillas (2011) correctly identified their specimens from Jenaro Herrera, Nuevo San Juan, Orosa, and Quebrada Blanco as Lophostoma silvicolum . The voucher material we examined from the Yavarí-Ucayali interfluve conforms to previous descriptions of the species, and measurements fall within the range of size variation previously documented for L. silvicolum .

REMARKS: Of 22 nocturnal captures of Lophostoma silvicolum recorded from our region, 21 were in ground-level mistnets; of these, 8 were in primary forest, 12 were in secondary vegetation, and 1 was in a palm swamp (aguajal). One additional individual was taken in a bananabaited rat trap tied to a liana about 1 m above the ground in primary forest.

We found four roosts of this species near Nuevo San Juan, all of them in arboreal termite nests. The first roost, about 2 m above the ground in secondary vegetation, contained five or six individuals (of which one adult female was collected on 22 May 1998). The second roost, about 4 m above the ground in secondary vegetation, contained two individuals (an adult female and her nursing offspring, both collected on 9 September 1999). The third roost, about 2.5 m above the ground in primary valley-bottom forest, contained five individuals (of which one adult male and one adult female were collected on 11 September 1999). The fourth roost, about 5 m above the ground in secondary vegetation, contained two individuals (of which one adult male was collected on 23 September 1999). Lophostoma silvicolum was usually found roosting without other species of bats, but the second roost described above was shared with a single adult male Phyllostomus hastatus .

Lophostoma silvicolum is well known to construct roosts in active termite nests (fig. 18), which are sometimes coinhabited by Phyllostomus hastatus (see Tuttle, 1970; Kalko et al., 1999, 2006; Díaz and Linares García, 2012; Rengifo et al., 2013). However, P. hastatus seems to be a roost parasite that is not believed to participate in roost construction or maintenance (Kalko et al., 2006).

Figures

FIG. 17. Photographs of A, an adult Lophostoma brasiliense captured at Quebrada Blanco; and B, an adult female (ROM 122117) L. silvicolum captured at Jenaro Herrera. Photographs by Marco Tschapka (A) and Burton Lim (B).

FIG. 18. Lophostoma silvicolum using an arboreal termite nest as roost at Jenaro Herrera. Photograph by Marco Tschapka.