Myotis sp.

Saikia, Uttam, Chakravarty, Rohit, Csorba, Gabor, Laskar, Mostaque Ahmed & Ruedi, Manuel, 2025, Taxonomic reassessment of bats from the Western Himalayas, India and description of a new species of the Myotis frater complex (Mammalia, Chiroptera, Vespertilionidae), Zootaxa 5644 (1), pp. 1-78 : 34

17. Myotis sp.

New material: 1 M, 02.05.2021, Ansuya, Chamoli District , Uttarakhand, V /M/ERS/653 .

Morphological description of specimen: This specimen proved to be an undescribed species within the My. frater species complex ( Tsytsulina & Strelkov 2001), we therefore describe its morphological characters in a section below.

DNA: Due to degraded condition of DNA, we only obtained a short fragment (182 bp) of the COI of the vouchered specimen V/M/ERS/653. This fragment was almost identical (one single transition mutation) compared to two other COI sequences (GB MN714904 and MN339184 ) of the same species from Uttarakhand reported in Chakravarty et al. (2020) under the name “ Myotis cf. frater ”. No other matching sequence was available in the GenBank, the closest one being that of My. soror from Taiwan (at 9.8%). Other sequences issued from species in the My. frater species complex were all more divergent (>12 %).

Locality records and ecological notes: all records and ecological notes related to that species are given below in the formal description.

Taxonomic notes: The My. frater species complex is comprised of several (mainly allopatric) taxa: My. frater from eastern China and Taiwan, My. longicaudatus from central and south–eastern Siberia, Korea and Japan (including kaguyae and eniseensis as subspecies), My. bucharensis from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan ( Horácek et al. 2000; Tsytsulina & Strelkov 2001; Benda et al. 2024; Kazakov et al. 2025), and My. soror , a Taiwan endemic which lives in sympatry with My. frater ( Ruedi et al. 2015) .All these taxa are morphologically quite similar but genetically distinct. According to mitochondrial markers, however, they do not form a monophyletic clade but include other, morphologically unrelated species such as My. daubentonii and My. bechsteinii ( Ruedi et al. 2013, 2015; Kazakov et al. 2020). Genetically, the Uttarakhand specimens are indeed part of the My. frater species complex (according to COI; Chakravarty et al. 2020) but owing to a distinct combination of unique genetic and morphological traits, specimens from Uttarakhand certainly represent a new taxon. A very similar specimen was caught in Pakistan about 700 km to the west of this Uttarakhand individual. Since both are externally and cranially indistinguishable, and because they were found in the same continuous montane forests commonly found at these altitudes, we conclude that both individuals are conspecific and include them in the following description.