Megadermatidae, or false vampire bats, are a family of

bat Bats are mammals of the order Chiroptera.''cheir'', "hand" and πτερόν''pteron'', "wing". With their forelimbs adapted as wings, they are the only mammals capable of true and sustained flight. Bats are more agile in flight than most bi ...

s found from central

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

, eastwards through southern

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an area ...

, and into

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

. They are relatively large bats, ranging from 6.5 cm to 14 cm in head-body length. They have large eyes, very large ears and a prominent

nose-leaf A nose-leaf, or leaf nose, is an often large, lance-shaped nose, found in bats of the Phyllostomidae, Hipposideridae The Hipposideridae are a family of bats commonly known as the Old World leaf-nosed bats. While it has often been seen as a su ...

. They have a wide membrane between the hind legs, or

uropatagium The patagium (plural: patagia) is a membranous body part that assists an animal in obtaining lift when gliding or flight. The structure is found in extant and extinct groups of flying and gliding animals including bats, birds, some dromaeosau ...

, but no tail. Many species are a drab brown in color, but some are white, bluish-grey or even olive-green, helping to camouflage them against their preferred roosting environments. They are primarily insectivorous, but will also eat a wide range of small vertebrates.

Description

False vampire bats are relatively large, with combined head and body lengths that range from . Their forearm lengths range from . They all lack tails. The

ghost bat The ghost bat (''Macroderma gigas'') is a species of bat found in northern Australia. The species is the only Australian bat that preys on large vertebrates – birds, reptiles and other mammals – which they detect using acute sight and heari ...

is the largest member of the family. All the species have very large ears with divided

tragi The tragus is a small pointed eminence of the external ear, situated in front of the concha, and projecting backward over the meatus. It also is the name of hair growing at the entrance of the ear. Its name comes the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'g ...

. They have long nose-leaves. All species are similar in that they lack upper

incisor Incisors (from Latin ''incidere'', "to cut") are the front teeth present in most mammals. They are located in the premaxilla above and on the mandible below. Humans have a total of eight (two on each side, top and bottom). Opossums have 18, whe ...

s, though not all species have the same dental formulae. The lesser false vampire bat and greater false vampire bat have a dental formula of , while the ghost bat, heart-nosed bat, Thongaree's disc-nosed bat, and yellow-winged bat have a dental formula of .

Biology and ecology

These species are collectively called false vampire due to the old misconception that they were sanguivorous like the true

vampire bat Vampire bats, species of the subfamily Desmodontinae, are leaf-nosed bats found in Central and South America. Their food source is blood of other animals, a dietary trait called hematophagy. Three extant bat species feed solely on blood: the com ...

s. The ghost bat, heart-nosed bat, lesser false vampire bat, and greater false vampire bat feed on insects and small vertebrates; the yellow-winged bat and Thongaree's disc-nosed bat are likely fully

insectivorous A robber fly eating a hoverfly An insectivore is a carnivorous animal or plant that eats insects. An alternative term is entomophage, which can also refer to the human practice of eating insects. The first vertebrate insectivores were ...

. The heart-nosed bat, greater false vampire bat, and the ghost bat are three of the few bat-eating bats in the world. All species of this family are

nocturnal Nocturnality is an animal behavior characterized by being active during the night and sleeping during the day. The common adjective is "nocturnal", versus diurnal meaning the opposite. Nocturnal creatures generally have highly developed sens ...

, with the exception of the yellow-winged bat which is sometimes active in daylight.

Systematics

Megadermatidae is a family within the Rhinolophoidea

superfamily SUPERFAMILY is a database and search platform of structural and functional annotation for all proteins and genomes. It classifies amino acid sequences into known structural domains, especially into SCOP superfamilies. Domains are functional, str ...

. Genetic analysis shows that it is the most basal member of the superfamily. It is a

monophyletic In cladistics for a group of organisms, monophyly is the condition of being a clade—that is, a group of taxa composed only of a common ancestor (or more precisely an ancestral population) and all of its lineal descendants. Monophyletic gro ...

family of bats, based on genetic analysis. There is confusion about the relationship of species within Megadermatidae. A 2015 study concluded that, while they did not have enough genetic data to fully resolve these relationships, the two ''

Megaderma ''Megaderma'' is a genus of bat in the family Megadermatidae. It contains two living species: * Lesser false vampire bat (''Megaderma spasma'') * Greater false vampire bat (''Megaderma lyra'') ''Megaderma lyra'' has a larger wingspan than ''Me ...

'' species should be in separate

genera Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nomenclat ...

. The authors of the 2015 paper suggested that the

greater false vampire bat The greater false vampire bat (''Lyroderma lyra'') is a species of bat in the family Megadermatidae, the false vampire bats. It is native to Asia. It is also known as the Indian false vampire bat or greater false-vampire Description This speci ...

, ''Megaderma lyra'', should be renamed as ''Lyroderma lyra''. The recovered

cladogram A cladogram (from Greek ''clados'' "branch" and ''gramma'' "character") is a diagram used in cladistics to show relations among organisms. A cladogram is not, however, an evolutionary tree because it does not show how ancestors are related to d ...

in the 2015 study had relatively low

posterior probabilities The posterior probability is a type of conditional probability that results from updating the prior probability with information summarized by the likelihood via an application of Bayes' rule. From an epistemological perspective, the posterior ...

, however, underscoring the need for future study to achieve higher resolution. Note that Thongaree's disc-nosed bat, '' Eudiscoderma thongareeae'', was not included in this analysis, as it was not described as a new species until 2015.

Fossil record

Megadermatidae is a relatively old family, appearing in the fossil record as early as 37 million years ago. Several fossil species have been described, including: * '' Macroderma koppa''

Hand A hand is a prehensile, multi-fingered appendage located at the end of the forearm or forelimb of primates such as humans, chimpanzees, monkeys, and lemurs. A few other vertebrates such as the koala (which has two opposable thumbs on each "h ...

, Dawson & Augee, 1988. a fossil species that existed in the

Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.333 million to 2.58 * ''

Macroderma godthelpi ''Macroderma godthelpi'' is a species of bat known from fossil material found in Australia, one of the larger carnivorous megadermatid family of the order Chiroptera. They resembled the modern species ''Macroderma gigas'', known as a false vampir ...

'', Hand, 1985. the earliest and smallest species * '' Macroderma malugara''

, 1996. *'' Megaderma brailloni'': Discovered in France; dated from the early

Eocene The Eocene ( ) Epoch is a geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 56 to 33.9 million years ago (mya). It is the second epoch of the Paleogene Period (geology), Period in the modern Cenozoic Era (geology), Era. The name ''Eocene' ...

. *'' Megaderma gaillardi'': Discovered in France; dated from the mid-

Miocene The Miocene ( ) is the first geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and means "less recen ...

. *'' Megaderma lugdunensis'': Discovered in France and the Czech Republic; dated from the mid-

. *'' Megaderma jaegeri'': Discovered in Morocco; dated from the mid-

*'' Megaderma vireti'': Discovered in

Lissieu Lissieu () is a commune in the Metropolis of Lyon in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region in eastern France. See also *Communes of the Metropolis of Lyon The following is a list of the 59 communes of the Lyon Metropolis, France France () ...

, France; dated from the late

. *'' Megaderma mediterraneum'': Discovered in France; dated from the late

Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.333 million to 2.58Megaderma janossyi'': Discovered in Hungary; dated from the early

Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.333 million to 2.58Megaderma watwat'': Discovered in Palestine; dated from the

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological Epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fina ...

Conservation

All Megadermatidae species are evaluated as

least concern A least-concern species is a species that has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as evaluated as not being a focus of species conservation because the specific species is still plentiful in the wild. T ...

by the IUCN with the exception of the ghost bat, which is vulnerable, and Thongaree's disc-nosed bat, which is critically endangered.

Classification

A list of extant species includes, Family Megadermatidae *Genus '' Cardioderma'' ** Heart-nosed bat, ''Cardioderma cor'' *Genus '' Lavia'' **

Yellow-winged bat The yellow-winged bat (''Lavia frons'') is one of five species of false vampire bat (family Megadermatidae) from Africa. Description The yellow-winged bat has a total length of Rosevear, D. 1965. The Bats of West Africa. London: Trustees of the ...

, ''Lavia frons'' *Genus '' Macroderma'' **

Ghost bat The ghost bat (''Macroderma gigas'') is a species of bat found in northern Australia. The species is the only Australian bat that preys on large vertebrates – birds, reptiles and other mammals – which they detect using acute sight and heari ...

, ''Macroderma gigas'' *Genus ''

'' **

Lesser false vampire bat The lesser false vampire bat (''Megaderma spasma'') is a bat found in South Asia and Southeast Asia from Sri Lanka and India in the west to Indonesia and the Philippines in the east. They live in caves and tree hollows. They are insectivorous. ...

, ''Megaderma spasma'' **

Greater false vampire bat The greater false vampire bat (''Lyroderma lyra'') is a species of bat in the family Megadermatidae, the false vampire bats. It is native to Asia. It is also known as the Indian false vampire bat or greater false-vampire Description This speci ...

, ''Megaderma lyra'' *Genus '' Eudiscoderma'' ** Thongaree's disc-nosed bat, ''Eudiscoderma thongareeae''

References

External links

Megadermatidae
{{Taxonbar, from=Q841327 Bat families Extant Rupelian first appearances Taxa named by Harrison Allen