Image of the Day: Dog-Faced Bats

The discovery of two new species within the Cynomops genus has expanded the total known number of dog-faced bat species to eight.

Written byThe Scientist
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Female (A) and male (B) Cynomops tonkigui, both captured at Gareno River, Napo, EcuadorDIEGO TIRIRA

Researchers characterized the body shapes and compared the DNA of 242 dog-faced bats in museum collections across Europe and the Americas. Armed with this evidence, along with field observations that included sound recordings, they added two new species, the Freeman’s dog-faced bat (Cynomops freeman) and the Waorani dog-faced bat (C. tonkigui).

L. Moras et al., “Uncovering the diversity of dog-faced bats of the genus Cynomops (Chiroptera: Molossidae), with the redescription of C. milleri and the description of two new species,” Mammalian Biology, doi:10.1016/j.mambio.2017.12.005, 2018.

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