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The modern history of Jamaica is entwined with European exploration of the New World beginning with the landing of Columbus at Discovery Bay on May 4, 1494, during his second voyage to the Americas. Since that time the word Jamaica has conjured thoughts of tropical beaches, trade winds, pleasant tropical nights, Spaniards, British navy, Empire, sugar, rum, plantations, slavery, revolt, maroons, pirates, Port Royal, disasters, hurricanes, and in more recent years independence, tourism, Reggae, and welcoming and happy residents. Our knowledge of Jamaican natural history begins with Browne (1789). He and other early naturalists displayed a broad interest in plants and animals, including bats, but thorough surveys of the island’s chiropteran fauna were not accomplished until the 1960s when mist nets came into general use. Following Browne (1789), the general natural history of Jamaica and of bats of the island were described by Gosse (1851), Osburn (1865), G. M. Allen (1911), Anthony (1920), Palmer (1940), Sanderson (1941), Asprey and Robbins (1953), Goodwin (1970), Adams (1972), McFarlane (1985, 1986), and Fincham (1997).
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... Close study of the roosting behaviour of stenodermatines is needed to understand the relationships between these phenotypes and competitive interactions with other lineages, if any. Despite their vast continental ranges, Short-faced bats are thought to be rare (in the sense of being found in few places), non-dominant and found at low frequencies (Carter, Genoways, Loregnard, & Baker, 1981;Goodwin & Greenhall, 1961;Handley, 1976 focus on caves (D avalos & Eriksson, 2003;N uñez-Novas, Le on, Mateo, & D avalos, 2016), the rarity of Short-faced bats might arise from sampling bias and may not reflect relative abundance for these bats (Genoways, Baker, Bickham, & Phillips, 2005). In contrast with this conventional view, Ariteus has been found to be locally common at one disturbed site (Howe, 1974), and abundant-if not dominant-, around fruiting Maclura tinctoria (Rosales: Moraceae) at one site, as well as in association with many other native and introduced trees at multiple sites (Genoways et al., 2005). ...
... Despite their vast continental ranges, Short-faced bats are thought to be rare (in the sense of being found in few places), non-dominant and found at low frequencies (Carter, Genoways, Loregnard, & Baker, 1981;Goodwin & Greenhall, 1961;Handley, 1976 focus on caves (D avalos & Eriksson, 2003;N uñez-Novas, Le on, Mateo, & D avalos, 2016), the rarity of Short-faced bats might arise from sampling bias and may not reflect relative abundance for these bats (Genoways, Baker, Bickham, & Phillips, 2005). In contrast with this conventional view, Ariteus has been found to be locally common at one disturbed site (Howe, 1974), and abundant-if not dominant-, around fruiting Maclura tinctoria (Rosales: Moraceae) at one site, as well as in association with many other native and introduced trees at multiple sites (Genoways et al., 2005). ...
... For our work, we used information about diagnostic morphological features of bats from personal experience and appropriate reference sources for specific sites. Some of the reference books we used included Van Zyll de Jong (1985) for Canada; Barbour and Davis (1969) for the United States; Reid (2009) for Belize; Genoways et al. (2005) for Jamaica; Dietz and Kiefer (2014) for Europe; Monadjem et al. (2010) as well as Patterson and Webala (2012) for south and central Africa; Bates and Harrison (1997) for India; and Payne and Francis (2005) as well as Francis (2019) for SE Asia. We are confident about the identifications to species for at least 54 of the 60+ species we have photographed, although not every photograph of each species can be reliably identified, depending upon the details Fig. 7 Occasionally, photographs show bats actively handling prey. ...
The recent pandemic and other environmental concerns have resulted in restrictions on research and surveys involving capture and handling bats. While acoustic surveys have been widely used as an alternative survey method, in this study, we show how photographic surveys can offer an important contribution to study and survey bats. We outline approaches, using high speed flash and automated trip beams to obtain photos of flying bats of sufficient quality for reliable identification of species. We show, through a series of examples of setups and photographs, that photography is effective for surveying bats at a variety of sites, where bats roost, drink, and forage. We note, however, that photographic surveys cannot replace capture in all situations. In addition, although photographing bats is less invasive than capturing them, it can involve disturbance, so we stress the importance of minimizing the impact of such operations on bats.
Supplementary information:
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42991-022-00233-7.
... The biogeographic interpretations made by Larsen et al. (2012b) suggest at least two independent Myotis invasions into the Lesser Antilles, and reverse colonization by Caribbean Myotis to mainland Central and South America-the latter being a welldocumented pattern in other Caribbean bat lineages (Dávalos 2005(Dávalos , 2006(Dávalos , 2010Genoways et al. 2005;Pavan and Marroig 2017;Tavares et al. 2018). In addition, some biogeographic and ecological aspects suggest the need for taxonomic revision of some species. ...
Myotis nesopolus currently comprises two subspecies. The nominate subspecies (M. n. nesopolus) occurs on the Caribbean islands of Curaçao and Bonaire, Netherlands Antilles, whereas M. n. larensis is known from mainland South America in northeastern Colombia and northwestern Venezuela. Our Maximum Likelihood phylogenetic analyses of cytochrome-b gene sequences recovered M. nesopolus as a paraphyletic group, with M. n. nesopolus and M. n. larensis as non-sister lineages. The haplotype network indicates that these two subspecies do not share any haplotypes and are in different evolutionary trajectories. Additionally , these two subspecies can be distinguished on the basis of qualitative and quantitative morphological traits. This pattern supports the recognition of M. nesopolus and M. larensis as full species. Our results also reveal that the assemblage of Caribbean Myotis do not form a monophyletic group. Caribbean species are phylogenetically close to mainland species from northern South America and Central America, suggesting that colonization of Caribbean islands happened multiple times.
The Greater Antilles are known for their Pleistocene fossils of endemic sloths, hutias, coneys, spiny rats, rice rats, bats, monkeys, and shrew‐like insectivores. This chapter gives a concise overview of the faunas of the Greater Antilles. Then, a comprehensive treatment is provided of the history of discoveries, biozones, or faunal units and the peculiarities and evolutionary aspects of individual endemic species or lineages. The earliest fossils of terrestrial mammals date back to the Eocene and belong to a rhinocerotid and a terrestrial sirenian, both likely of a continental stock. The fossils show that the Greater Antilles has been a region with a high degree of endemism and high species diversity since at least the Early Miocene. Despite the fact that even today the West Indies constitutes a hotspot of biodiversity, the present mammalian fauna is only a poor representation of its extinct Late Quaternary fauna.
The discovery of a new species, Periglischrus empheresotrichus, was determined through a review of museum collections, as well as a field survey of ectoparasites of island bats. This new species parasitizes on two bat species of the genus Monophyllus Leach, the Greater Antillean Long-tongued bat Monophyllus redmani Leach and the Lesser Antillean Long-tongued bat Monophyllus plethodon Miller. The female, male, deuthonymphs, and protonymph are described and illustrated. P. empheresotrichus n. sp. has an insular distribution, we evaluated the morphological variation of the adult populations, and concluded that intra-specific variation is correlated both with host species and locality (island) in the West Indies.
Accurate accounts of both living and fossil mammal communities are critical for creating biodiversity inventories and understanding patterns of changing species diversity through time. We combined data from from14 new fossil localities with literature accounts and museum records to document the bat biodiversity of Haiti through time. We also report an assemblage of late-Holocene (1600–600 Cal BP) bat fossils from a montane cave (Trouing Jean Paul, ~1825m) in southern Haiti. The nearly 3000 chiropteran fossils from Trouing Jean Paul represent 15 species of bats including nine species endemic to the Caribbean islands. The fossil bat assemblage from Trouing Jean Paul is dominated by species still found on Hispaniola (15 of 15 species), much as with the fossil bird assemblage from the same locality (22 of 23 species). Thus, both groups of volant vertebrates demonstrate long-term resilience, at least at high elevations, to the past 16 centuries of human presence on the island.
There is clear evidence for the introduction of Old World mammals to the West Indies from the very first human appearance in the region. The mammals concerned were several species of African, Eurasian and Oriental origin, including monkeys, lagomorphs, carnivores, deer, commensal and non-commensal rodents, and possibly hedgehogs. Starting with the introduction of the dog in pre-Columbian times, the story of all these animals in the New World is intimately bound up with the early European settlements in America, the origins of West Indian slaves and the transatlantic route from the sixteenth century up to the twentieth century. It is important not to overlook the crucial role played by the Caribbean islands as a slave entrepôt and a historic vital link in the international trade between Europe, Africa and the Americas.
Here I report the first record of the bat Molossus molossus in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, northeastern Brazil. A colony of this species was recorded in the urban area of Lagoa Salgada, in the attic of a building. In January 2014, I captured 90 individuals of M. molossus using mist nets around the roost. The present record extends the distribution of M. molossus to far-northeastern Brazil and adds a new marginal occurrence site for this species.
