166.

Little Broad-nosed Bat

Scotorepens greyii

French: Sérotine de Grey / German: Grey-Breitnasenfledermaus / Spanish: Scotorepo de Grey

Other common names: Grey's Broad-nosed Bat

Taxonomy. Scotophilus greyii]. E. Gray, 1842,

Port Essington, Northern Territory, Australia.

This species is monotypic.

Distribution. N Western Australia, Northern Territory (including Bathurst I), Queensland except Cape York Peninsula, N & E South Australia, and New South Wales, Australia.

Descriptive notes. Head-body 37-2-53 mm, tail 25-2-48.-5 mm, ear 9-7-12: 9 mm, forearm 27-3-35 mm; weight 4-8-5 g. The Little Broad-nosed Bat is almost identical to the Northern Broad-nosed Bat (S. sanborni). Forearm size increases from east to west and from north to south. Dorsal pelage is brown to grayish brown; ventral pelageis slightly lighter. Ears are relatively broad and subtriangular, anterior edge being smoothly convex with rounded tip; tragus is evenly curved upward, with concave anterior edge, moderately convex posterior edge, and narrow and pointed tip. Muzzle is broad, with square shape and inflated glands on each side; nostrils are simple and rounded, diverging from one another. Bare parts of face, ears, and membranes are dark brown. Wings attach at base of fifth toe, and uropatagium extends from long calcar to tail tip; calcar stretches about halfway to tail and has small calcaneal lobe. Glans penis has up to ten spines on head, mainly in two long rows. Baculum is short (2:2-3-1 mm), with relatively robust shaft thatis slightly curved in lateral view; distal head is bifurcated, with two short narrow prongs behind which shaft occasionally narrows slightly before enlarging into slight lateral flanges; base is moderately wide, gently curved posterodorsally, and occasionally more square in line of shaft; groove on caudal and cranial surface of base is shallow and wide and meets as notch at apex. Skull is short, with relatively wide cranium; cranium profile is generally less inflated than in the Northern Broad-nosed Bat; sagittal crest is absent, and lambdoidal crest is moderately developed; anterior palatal notch is semicircular (occasionally spatulated), usually ending at mid-point of P*; I* is unicuspid and does not touch C'; P* is one-half to two-thirds the height of C' and touches it; lower incisors are tricuspid; and P, is small and less than one-half the height of P,.

Habitat. Monsoon forests, Melaleuca (Myrtaceae) forests, tall open forests, open forests, open woodlands, mulga shrublands, mixed shrublands, escarpments, river red gum lined streams, and grasslands. The Little Broad-nosed Bat is common around waterholes and other water sources and tends to be located near permanent water.

Food and Feeding. Little Broad-nosed Bats forage in canopy within 2 m of foliage and often forage over open spaces and water. They are moderately fast and agile fliers, making abrupt horizontal turns where they roll to near vertical bank angle. They feed on various insects but seem to prefer beetles, true bugs, and ants; they eat moths, termites, cockroaches, katydids, crickets, flies, and lacewings. In the Top End region, fecal and stomach samples mainly contained beetles (44-2% by volume), true bugs (27-7%), and hymenopterans (17-7%), with smaller amounts of lepidopterans, cockroaches, termites, neuropterans, and flies (but individuals used in that study were not differentiated from the Northern Broad-nosed Bat). Although Little Broad-nosed Bats feed mostly aerially, presence offlightless insects in diets suggests that they glean insects off foliage.

Breeding. Pregnant Little Broad-nosed Bats are known from late August to early November, and twins (sometimes single young) are born in October-November. Volant young appear in mid-December, at which time femalesarestill lactating. Not all females breed every year. All males had enlarged testes in April that were regressed by November.

Activity patterns. The Little Broad-nosed Bat is nocturnal. It generally roosts in tree hollows, but it has been reported roosting in hollows in fence posts, space under metal caps of telephone poles, and abandoned buildings. They can enter torpor during the day to conserve energy. In New South Wales, they entered torpor on 83-3% of days for c.7 hours/day, and 44-8% of individuals rewarmed daily using entirely passive rewarming. Call shape is steep FM/QCF sweep, and in Queensland, average minimum frequency was 38-4 kHz, maximum frequency was 64-5 kHz, peak frequency was 40-1 kHz, duration was 7-1 milliseconds, and interpulse interval was 104-5 milliseconds.

Movements, Home range and Social organization. Little Broad-nosed Bats roost in colonies of 2-20 individuals.

Status and Conservation. Classified as Least Concern on The IUCN Red Lust.

Bibliography. Baverstock et al. (1987), Bondarenco et al. (2016), Bullen & McKenzie (2002b), Churchill (2008), Hall (2009), Jones & Corben (1993), Kitchener & Caputi (1985), Lumsden & Bennett (2005), McKenzie & Bullen (2012), Milne (2002), Milne, Armstrong et al. (2004), Milne, Burwell & Pavey (2016), Richards, Reardon & Pennay (2008), Young & Ford (2000).