Wollaston's roundleaf bat (''Hipposideros wollastoni'') is a species of bat in the family

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 subfamily, Hipposiderinae, of the family Rhinolophidae, it is now more generally classified as its own family.Simmons, 20 ...

. It is found in West Papua, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. It was named after the explorer

Sandy Wollaston Alexander Frederick Richmond "Sandy" Wollaston (22 May 1875, Clifton, Gloucestershire – 3 June 1930, Cambridge) was an English medical doctor, ornithologist, botanist, climber and explorer. After qualifying as a surgeon in 1903, Wollaston deci ...

Taxonomy and etymology

It was described as a new species in 1913 by British zoologist

Oldfield Thomas Michael Rogers Oldfield Thomas (21 February 1858 – 16 June 1929) was a British zoologist. Career Thomas worked at the Natural History Museum on mammals, describing about 2,000 new species and subspecies for the first time. He was appoin ...

. The eponym for the species name "''wollastoni''" is A. F. R. Wollaston. The holotype used to describe this species was collected during one of Wollaston's expeditions to New Guinea.

Description

In his initial description of the species, Thomas noted that it was similar in appearance to the

Fly River roundleaf bat The Fly River roundleaf bat (''Hipposideros muscinus'') is a species of bat in the family Hipposideridae. It is found in West Papua, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. Taxonomy The Fly River roundleaf bat was described as a new species in 1886 by ...

, ''Hipposideros muscinus''. It differs from the Fly River roundleaf bat in that its posterior nose-leaf has a "peculiar duplication" behind it. Its forearm length is approximately long. Its head and body is , while its tail is long. Its ears are long and wide.

Range and status

This species is only known from the island of New Guinea, in both Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. It has been documented from above sea level. It has been found in montane forests, oak forests, and

secondary forest A secondary forest (or second-growth forest) is a forest or woodland area which has re-grown after a timber harvest or clearing for agriculture, until a long enough period has passed so that the effects of the disturbance are no longer evident. ...

s. It is currently evaluated as least concern by the

IUCN The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN; officially International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natu ...

—its lowest conservation priority.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q1831018 Hipposideros Bats of Oceania Mammals of Papua New Guinea Mammals of Western New Guinea Mammals described in 1913 Taxa named by Oldfield Thomas Taxonomy articles created by Polbot Bats of New Guinea