A review of bats of the genus Pseudoromicia (Chiroptera: Vespertilionidae) with the description of a new species

Abstract

The Cameroon Volcanic Line, which divides the Congo Basin fauna from the West African fauna, is a known area of high endemism for various taxa, but the region’s bat fauna has received little attention. We review variation in morphological and molecular (mitochondrial Cytochrome b) characters in the Tropical African vespertilionid bat genus Pseudoromicia. Assessment of this variation indicates the existence of a new species of Pseudoromicia, from the Mbam Minkom Massif in the Centre Region of Cameroon. The new species is diagnosable by sequence data and is morphologically similar to its putative sister taxon, P. kityoi, from Uganda. Although we suggest that it be assigned to the IUCN category of Data Deficient, there should be some concern as to the conservation status of this species: the Mbam Minkom Massif ecosystem is threatened due to lack of legal conservation frameworks and exposure to increasing human pressure. The new species is in a clade with P. roseveari and P. kityoi. These three species may be relicts of a single widespread species originating in the West African “white-winged” group of Pseudoromicia that then spread east across the tropical moist broadleaf forest into East Africa, and are now restricted to a few upland rainforest patches in West Africa (P. roseveari), in outliers of the Cameroon Volcanic Line region (Pseudoromicia sp.), and the Lake Victoria area (P. kityoi). The smaller, white-winged species are hypothesized to be ancestral, with one extant putative species (P. rendalli) also extending into East and southern Africa (Van Cakenberghe & Happold, 2013). The larger, dark-winged taxa likely dispersed to East Africa and subsequently back to West Africa (e.g., Pseudoromicia sp., P. roseveari). Our data illustrate the potential importance of the Dahomey Gap and climatic changes in the evolution of this group of species.

http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:30929BAA-4043-422D-B209-16CAB826043E

Key words:

• Africa
• bat
• biodiversity
• Cameroon
• mitochondrial DNA
• systematics
• taxonomy

Acknowledgements

We thank the Cameroon Ministry of Scientific Research and Innovation for kindly granting us research and collecting permits to undertake the research described herein (permits 96–99 of year 2019), and the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife for permission to export our specimens (permit no. 1538 of year 2019). We thank Jan Decher for his guidance and moral support, as well as providing material support from the Alexander Koenig Zoological Research Museum (Bonn, Germany). We are immensely thankful to the communities surrounding Mount Mbam Minkom, who provided access, assistance, and accommodation; and in particular our host family in Nkolakié. We thank The Field Museum’s Pritzker Laboratory staff for providing exceptional training in molecular techniques and use of their laboratory space and equipment. We thank the Collaborative Invertebrate Laboratories at the Field Museum and Dr C. Moreau for use of the imaging equipment (National Science Foundation, Negaunee foundation), and S. Ware, Manager Morphology Laboratories, for taking the dental light photographs. We also thank J. H. French of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Forensic Laboratory (Ashland, Oregon) for taking the scanning electron micrograph of the dentition of the holotype of P. mbamminkom.

Disclosure statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article can be accessed here: https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14772000.2022.2156002.

Associate Editor: Dr Susan Tsang

Additional information

Funding

Funding of this research for ALG came from Portland State University’s Lester Newman Undergraduate Research Scholars Program and Spike Wadsworth and Y. Sherry Sheng Fund for Biology, both programmes at Portland State University.