New Species on project

News from Carol in Nicaragua.  This is their last week on the project.  They are now at 44 species and 1421 captures for the project. On Jan 27 they captured a new species for Nicaragua. This species has only been captured 5 times in Costa Rica. All captures have been on the Caribbean side; none in dry tropical forest. Ours was on the Pacific side of the country in the dry tropical forest (possibly a lake effect from Lake Nicaragua?).


The new species is the pale-faced bat (Phylloderma stenops; pictures on separate post)

The other new species were Godman’s whiskered bat (Choeroniscus godmani, a small dark bat with a long slender nose and lots of long whiskers. The next new species was Heller’s broad-nosed bat (Platyrrhinus helleri). This was followed by the Phylloderma stenops  and ended with hairy big-eyed bat (Chiroderma villosum). Nicaragua now has 100 species (counting Artibeus intermedius and Artibeus literatus as same species per Simmons 2005).

Having a new species record for Nicaragua is really, really exciting!


Pictures on the next post!