Miniopterus fuliginosus Hodgson, 1835

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 : 59

29. Miniopterus fuliginosus Hodgson, 1835

(Eastern long winged bat)

New material: 2 F, 11.06.2017, Derghat, Solan District , Himachal Pradesh , V /M/ERS/411, 412 and one released female at Mandal , Uttarakhand .

Morphological description of specimen: The individuals from the Western Himalayas had a light brown dorsal pelage intermixed with darker hairs whereas the ventral fur was uniform lighter brown with darker roots. Ears, muzzle and patagium were lighter brown. There was a small patch of dark brown hairs in the forehead just over the muzzle. Overall colour pattern was similar to specimens of the larger Mi. magnater from northeastern India.

As previously reported, Mi. fuliginosus had an average forearm length of 48.4 mm which was smaller than in Mi. magnater (50.6 mm) for Indian specimens ( Saikia et al. 2020). The cranial dimensions of Mi. fuliginosus were also smaller (e.g., GTLi <16.2 mm or CM 3 <6. 5 mm) with no overlap with those of Mi. magnater (e.g., GTLi> 16.9 mm or CM 3> 6.7 mm).

DNA: No new biological material was obtained here but the CYTB and COI haplotypes (GB MW054886 and MW054924 , respectively) of one of these Himachal Pradesh specimens (M 2262/ V /M/ERS/ 411) was reported in Ruedi et al. (2021) .

Locality records and ecological notes: Uttarakhand: Bajawala (638 m), Dehradun district; Dhanaulti (2114 m), Tehri–Garhwal district; Ramnagar (330 m), Nainital district ( Wroughton 1914; Chakravarty et al. 2020); Mandal (1600 m), Chamoli district (present study). Himachal Pradesh: Barog Tunnel (1560 m), Brewery Tunnel (1480 m); Kandaghat (1560 m); Chambaghat (1450 m), Solan district (labelled as Mi. schreibersii in Saikia et al. 2011).

Two adult females in non–reproductive state were caught in a harp–trap set near a concrete pond amidst a farmland bordering an oak forest patch. Earlier studies in Himachal Pradesh reported its common occurrence in the crevices of several dark, humid railway tunnels along Kalka–Shimla track ( Saikia et al. 2011). Our collection site was also located near a railway tunnel where these animals were likely to be roosting. In Uttarakhand, this bat was recorded in a variety of habitats like open streams, shrub–covered hills to oak forests and pregnant individuals were caught in the month of May ( Chakravarty et al. 2020). The minimum and maximum echolocation call frequency recorded was 47.0 kHz and 88.9 kHz respectively ( Chakravarty et al. 2020).

Taxonomic notes: For several decades, many Asian, African, and Australasian taxa of mid–size Miniopterus were considered to represent a single polytypic species, Mi. schreibersii s.l. As such, this species name was associated to most reports from the Old World, including from India (e.g., Bates & Harrison 1990). New approaches combining morphology and molecular methods clearly demonstrated that Mi. schreibersii s.s. is in fact restricted to the Western Palearactic and eastward does not range beyond the Caucasus. Indeed, recent accounts using such integrative approaches evidenced that the Indian Subcontinent was home to five species of Miniopterus , i.e. Mi. magnater , Mi. fuliginosus , Mi. phillipsi , Mi. pusillus and Mi. srinii ( Kusuminda et al. 2022; Srinivasulu & Srinivasulu 2023). In the Western Himalayas, current genetic and morphologic evidence support only the occurrence of Mi. fuliginosus , while the larger Mi. magnater (and the much smaller Mi. pusillus ) are found further east and south of this region (see e.g., Saikia et al. 2020), the last species ( Mi. phillipsi and Mi. srinii ) being endemic to southern India and Sri Lanka.