Pipistrellus hesperidus

Abstract

Pipistrellus hesperidus (Temminck, 1840) Fig. 46 E–F Vespertilio hesperida Temminck, 1840: 211. This species used to be included in Pipistrellus kuhlii, but as found by Göpfert et al. (1995: 68) and Volleth et al. (2001: 28), the sub-Saharan specimens have a different chromosome number than the specimens from Europe and northern Africa. For these sub-Saharan populations, Kock (2001: 277) reinstated the name hesperidus. Specimens belonging to this species were collected at three localities in the CRB area: two in Rwanda (Mutura and Kitabi) and one in Burundi (Nyamugari Hill). Kearney (2013d: 630) indicates that P. hesperidus is distributed in a narrow band in eastern Africa, reaching from southwestern Eritrea, over western Ethiopia, eastern South Sudan to northern Uganda, where it splits into two branches, one along the Kenyan-Tanzanian border reaching the coast, and a second along the great lakes to eastern Zimbabwe and the eastern RSA, reaching just north of Port Elizabeth. Additionally, she marked the presence of the species in the Mount Cameroon area and in Djibouti, with some further individual localities in northeastern Somalia, western Zambia, Angola and southern RSA. Furthermore, she refers to Jakob Fahr, who indicated that some records from West Africa might be misidentified. The SDM map confirms the presence of the species in eastern Africa. The records from West Africa might need to be re-examined.Published as part of Cakenberghe, Victor Van, Tungaluna, Guy-Crispin Gembu, Akawa, Prescott Musaba, Seamark, Ernest & Verheyen, Erik, 2017, The bats of the Congo and of Rwanda and Burundi revisited (Mammalia: Chiroptera), pp. 1-327 in European Journal of Taxonomy 382 on page 103, DOI: 10.5852/ejt.2017.382, http://zenodo.org/record/386007