The Sulawesi broad-eared horseshoe bat or Tatar horseshoe bat (''Rhinolophus tatar'') is a species of
horseshoe bat
Horseshoe bats are bats in the family Rhinolophidae. In addition to the single living genus, ''Rhinolophus'', which has about 106 species, the extinct genus '' Palaeonycteris'' has been recognized. Horseshoe bats are closely related to the Old ...
''R. tatar'' was described as a new species in 1982 by Bergmans and Rozendaal.
In 1992, Hill published that it was
synonymous
A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words ''begin'', ''start'', ''commence'', and ''initiate'' are all ...
with the
broad-eared horseshoe bat
The broad-eared horseshoe bat (''Rhinolophus euryotis'') is a species 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 ...
, ''R. euryotis''. In 2013, a morphological and genetic analysis concluded that ''R. tatar'' was distinct from the broad-eared horseshoe bat. The
species name
In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bot ...
"''tatar''" is a
portmanteau
A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of wordsGeorge Henry Hamilton Tate and Richard Archbold. Tate and Archbold's 1939 publication "Oriental Rhinolophus, with special reference to material from the Archbold Collections" "presumably recognized ''Rhinolophus tatar'' as a species . . . only through an error, they attached a wrong name to it."
Description
''R. tatar'' has a forearm length of . It has large, triangular ears that are longer than they are wide. Its fur is dense and woolly. Individual hairs are bicolored: on the back, they have white bases and dark brown tips, while on the belly they have white bases and medium-brown tips.
Biology and ecology
''R. tatar'' is
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 ...
,
gleaning
Gleaning is the act of collecting leftover crops from farmers' fields after they have been commercially harvested or on fields where it is not economically profitable to harvest. It is a practice described in the Hebrew Bible that became a legall ...
prey from foliage or
hawking
Hawking may refer to:
People
* Stephen Hawking (1942–2018), English theoretical physicist and cosmologist
* Hawking (surname), a family name (including a list of other persons with the name)
Film
* ''Hawking'' (2004 film), about Stephen Ha ...
them from the air. It possibly roosts in caves, though it is more likely that it roosts in trees. It is known to be affected by
ectoparasites
Parasitism is a close relationship between species, where one organism, the parasite, lives on or inside another organism, the host, causing it some harm, and is adapted structurally to this way of life. The entomologist E. O. Wilson has ...
including two families of bat flies:
Nycteribiidae
Nycteribiidae is a family of the true fly superfamily Hippoboscoidea are known as "bat flies", together with their close relatives the Streblidae. As the latter do not seem to be a monophyletic group, it is conceivable that bat flies cannot be u ...
Streblidae
The Streblidae are a family of flies in the superfamily Hippoboscoidea, and together with their relatives the Nycteribiidae, are known as bat flies. They are winged or wingless ectoparasites of bats, and often have long legs. They appear to be ho ...
.
It has also been documented with
mites
Mites are small arachnids (eight-legged arthropods). Mites span two large orders of arachnids, the Acariformes and the Parasitiformes, which were historically grouped together in the subclass Acari, but genetic analysis does not show clear evid ...
.
Range and habitat
It is
endemic
Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...
to
Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...
, where it has only been found on the island of
Sulawesi
Sulawesi (), also known as Celebes (), is an island in Indonesia. One of the four Greater Sunda Islands, and the world's eleventh-largest island, it is situated east of Borneo, west of the Maluku Islands, and south of Mindanao and the Sulu Ar ...