The pristine mustached bat (''Pteronotus (Phyllodia) pristinus'') is an

extinct Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

Late

Quaternary The Quaternary ( ) is the current and most recent of the three periods of the Cenozoic Era in the geologic time scale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS). It follows the Neogene Period and spans from 2.58 million year ...

species of bat in the

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 else ...

Neotropical The Neotropical realm is one of the eight biogeographic realms constituting Earth's land surface. Physically, it includes the tropical terrestrial ecoregions of the Americas and the entire South American temperate zone. Definition In bioge ...

family

Mormoopidae The family Mormoopidae contains bats known generally as mustached bats, ghost-faced bats, and naked-backed bats. They are found in the Americas from the Southwestern United States to Southeastern Brazil. They are distinguished by the presenc ...

. It was distributed in

Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribb ...

and possibly

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and ...

(

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

Distribution

This bat is known only from

subfossils A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

. It was described from Late

cave deposits in

( Las Villas Province,

Trinidad Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands of Trinidad and Tobago. The island lies off the northeastern coast of Venezuela and sits on the continental shelf of South America. It is often referred to as the southernmos ...

, Cueva de los Masones) and found also in

Rancholabrean The Rancholabrean North American Land Mammal Age on the geologic timescale is the North American faunal stage according to the North American Land Mammal Ages chronology (NALMA), typically set from less than 240,000 years to 11,000 years BP, a pe ...

cave deposits in southern

(

Monkey Jungle Monkey Jungle is a zoological park located in Miami, Florida. Established in 1933 by Joseph DuMond for the exhibition and study of endangered monkeys in semi-natural habitats after releasing 6 Java Monkeys into a subtropical forest, the park is no ...

Hammock).

Pristine mustached bat Pteronotus pristinus fossil distribution

Florida specimens (two

mandible In anatomy, the mandible, lower jaw or jawbone is the largest, strongest and lowest bone in the human facial skeleton. It forms the lower jaw and holds the lower teeth in place. The mandible sits beneath the maxilla. It is the only movable bone ...

s) were only tentatively referred to ''Pteronotus''

cf. The abbreviation ''cf.'' (short for the la, confer/conferatur, both meaning "compare") is used in writing to refer the reader to other material to make a comparison with the topic being discussed. Style guides recommend that ''cf.'' be used onl ...

''P. pristinus'', because they could not be directly compared with the Cuban material (several skulls,

postcrania Postcrania (postcranium, adjective: postcranial) in zoology and vertebrate paleontology is all or part of the skeleton apart from the skull. Frequently, fossil remains, e.g. of dinosaurs or other extinct tetrapods, consist of partial or isolated sk ...

l elements), but they may represent ''P. pristinus''. This is the only occurrence of ''

Pteronotus ''Pteronotus'' is a genus 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 ...

'' in the United States, fossil or recent. Cuba is the most likely source for

West Indian A West Indian is a native or inhabitant of the West Indies (the Antilles and the Lucayan Archipelago). For more than 100 years the words ''West Indian'' specifically described natives of the West Indies, but by 1661 Europeans had begun to use it ...

bats in Florida.

Extinction

Caribbean Sea Gulf of Mexico shaded relief bathymetry land map 2

In Florida, the pristine mustached bat became locally extinct at the end of 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 ...

, what probably resulted from the rise in sea level, the subsequent flooding of caves and loss of roosting sites. The sea level in Florida was as much as 100 m lower in late Pleistocene, as well water tables, and cave systems in

Hammock, Cutler Hammock and Rock Springs were dry. But during the latest Pleistocene the rising sea level caused flooding of these cave systems and destroyed a hot and humid microclimate of so-called hot caves. Currently two first of them are sediment-filled sinkholes few meters above sea level, third one is submerged. In these three sites in southern peninsula, the sea level stand change presumably was also reason of extirpation of another tropical cave-dwelling bat in the

family

(extralimital

ghost-faced bat The ghost-faced bat (''Mormoops megalophylla'') is a bat in the genus ''Mormoops''. It is one of only two extant species within its genus, the other being the much smaller ''Mormoops blainvillii''. They are nocturnal and hunt using Animal echolo ...

''Mormoops megalophylla'') and one North American species (

southeastern myotis The southeastern myotis (''Myotis austroriparius'') is a small bat found throughout the Gulf Coastal Plain and the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Plain of the southeastern United States. Description The southeastern myotis weighs 5–8 g. Its d ...

''Myotis austroriparius'') as well. The fourth species -

big brown bat The big brown bat (''Eptesicus fuscus'') is a species of vesper bat distributed widely throughout North America, the Caribbean, and the northern portion of South America. It was first described as a species in 1796. Compared to other microbat ...

(''Eptesicus fuscus'') became rare in Florida caves. Such a pattern of extinction or extirpation is known also from many small islands in

West Indies The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Greate ...

(

Bahamas The Bahamas (), officially the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, is an island country within the Lucayan Archipelago of the West Indies in the North Atlantic. It takes up 97% of the Lucayan Archipelago's land area and is home to 88% of the a ...

Cayman Islands The Cayman Islands () is a self-governing British Overseas Territory—the largest by population in the western Caribbean Sea. The territory comprises the three islands of Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac and Little Cayman, which are located to the ...

Lesser Antilles The Lesser Antilles ( es, link=no, Antillas Menores; french: link=no, Petites Antilles; pap, Antias Menor; nl, Kleine Antillen) are a group of islands in the Caribbean Sea. Most of them are part of a long, partially volcanic island arc be ...

Notes

References

External links

Murciélago: Pteronotus pristinus
{{Taxonbar, from=Q10809473 Pteronotus Pleistocene extinctions Bats of North America Bats of Central America Bats of the United States Mammals of Cuba Mammals described in 1974