An international team of researchers has found a new species of long-fingered bats in India and Sri Lanka, close on the heels of the discovery of a thick-thumbed bat species in Meghalaya, officials said.바카라 웹사이트
The team led by Tharaka Kusuminda of University of Rohana in the island country named the new species of long-fingered bats as Miniopterus phillipsi, Uttam Saikia of the Zoological Survey of India and one of the leading scientists in the research, said.
It was named after W W A Philips (1892-1981) in recognition of his contributions to studies on the mammals of Sri Lanka and South Asia.바카라 웹사이트
The specimens for this species were collected from Idulgashinna cave in Uva Province in Sri Lanka and are now deposited in the Natural History Museum of the neighbouring country.
The initial research was carried out in Sri Lanka in 2019 and it took three years to be completed in both Sri Lanka and India.바카라 웹사이트
The discovery has been published in Acta Chiropterologica, 바카라 웹사이트an international scientific journal, on Friday, the researchers said.바카라 웹사이트
During investigations, researchers found that the population of long-fingered bats in Robber's cave in Mahabaleshwar in the Western Ghats of India also belongs to this species which was earlier mistaken as Eastern bent-winged bats, Kusuminda said.바카라 웹사이트
The long-fingered bats belonging to the family Miniopteridae are part of a large group comprising at least 40 species worldwide. 바카라 웹사이트 바카라 웹사이트
They have similar morphology and overlapping dimensions rendering species identification problematic, he added.
To describe this new species, researchers have DNA barcoded the specimens from India and Sri Lanka and compared them with all other Asian members of this group and found strong evidence for these specimens as belonging to a distinct species, the scientist said.
Besides, researchers also analysed the morphological and anatomical features of the new species with the congeners occurring in India and Sri Lanka and found that the new species is indeed distinct, Kusuminda said.
“The Long-fingered bats are obligatory cave and tunnel dwellers living in large colonies and this new species is also no exception,” the researcher stated.
While in Sri Lanka it is relatively widespread, more studies are needed to determine its exact distribution range in India, the scientist said.
At least 13 renowned scientists were involved in this particular research – six from Sri Lanka and one each from India, Russia, Switzerland, Hungary, the UK, and the USA.바카라 웹사이트
A team of scientists had recently discovered a new species of thick-thumbed bat from a bamboo forest in Meghalaya and named it after the state.바카라 웹사이트
The discovery of Glischropus meghalayanus was published in Zootaxa, a prominent taxonomic journal.
(With PTI inputs)
