Rhinolophus sinicus Thomas, 1915

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 : 23

9. Rhinolophus sinicus Thomas, 1915

(Chinese horseshoe bat)

New material: 1 F, 01.06.2017, Salogra cave, Solan District , Himachal Pradesh, V /M/ERS/422; 1 F , 01.06.2017, Saproon cave, Solan District , Himachal Pradesh, V /M/ERS/404 .

Morphological description of specimens: Our specimens had a forearm length of 47.9–50.2 mm. Pelage was golden brown dorsoventrally with slightly paler belly. Ears were shorter (17.6–19.1 mm). In specimen V /M/ ERS/404, the lancet had a well–defined longish tip immediately followed by a triangular base ( Fig. 8B ). In lateral view, the superior connecting process of sella was broadly rounded off. The lancet was broad with a well–defined short tip; the superior connecting process of the sella was round with the base of the sella projecting slightly forwards and downwards. Mental grooves were three in number. In the wings, the third and fourth metacarpals were almost equal in length, whereas the fifth was slightly longer. The second phalanx of the third metacarpal was longer at 22.5 mm on average. Thus, externally the Himachal Pradesh Rh. sinicus specimens corresponded well with the descriptions given in Thomas (2000) and Csorba et al. (2003).

The skulls had average condylocanine length of 17.77 mm. The zygomatic arches were flared with average width of 10.77 mm which was greater than the mastoid breadth (9.54 mm). Average palate length was 2.40 mm. The anterior border of the palate lied at the level of paracone of the first molar and the posterior border lied at the level of metastyle of second molars.

DNA: We obtained COI sequences of 705 bp from two individuals from Himachal Pradesh (M2070 and M 2208/ V /M/ERS/404), which proved to be almost identical. We also obtained a full length CYTB from one specimen (M2070). Reconsturctions based on both mitochondrial markers consistently grouped all these lineages with sequences from China assigned by Mao et al. (2017) to either Rh. sinicus or Rh. thomasi at about 5 % or less divergence from each other ( Figs 3 and 5). Interestingly, these lineages formed a strongly supported monophyletic clade which excluded the other members of the group, Rh. rouxii and the Peninsular Indian clade ( Chattopadhyay et al. 2012).

Locality records and ecological notes: Himachal Pradesh: Happy valley (1550 m), Saproon (1550 m) and Salogra (1440 m) in Solan district ( Saikia et al. 2011; present study) . Uttarakhand: Dharkuri (2700 m), Rudraprayag district ( Wroughton 1914 as Rh. rouxii ) .

The peak frequency was recorded at 87 kHz both in Himachal Pradesh (present study) and in Uttarakhand ( Chakravarty et al. 2020). In Himachal Pradesh, it can be told apart from Rh. affinis using acoustic characters (FmaxE 78 Khz) but in Uttarakhand their call frequencies overlap ( Chakravarty et al. 2020).

Taxonomic note: Based on craniodental and molecular data, Thomas (2000) recognized the Himalayan form Rh. sinicus as a species different from peninsular Indian Rh. rouxii . Besides some differences in the wing measures and noseleaf structures, shorter palate length (1.9 mm in average) with the anterior border lying adjacent to the metacone of the first molar was cited as one of the distinctive characters of Rh. sinicus against Rh. rouxii ( Thomas 2000) . We compared our Himachal specimens in the light of the above characters and observed that the palatal bridge was slightly longer (mean= 2.4 mm) with its anterior border extending beyond the metacone of the first molar. The upper canines of our specimens (albeit slightly worn out) were short, their height was at the level of the posterior premolar and did not seem to exceed the height of the second premolar considerably. Csorba et al. (2003) mentions this smaller upper canine as a distinguishing character of closely allied Rh. thomasi from Thailand. DNA sequences confirm the close phylogenetic relationships of the Indomalayan Rh. sinicus and Indochinese Rh. thomasi ( Figs 3 and 5) but contradict that they are related to morphologically similar Rh. rouxii and the Peninsular Indian clade. Indeed, the latter two taxa are much more divergent (>7%) and are phylogenetically unrelated, questioning the monophyly of the rouxii group defined by Csorba et al. (2003).

Figures

FIGURE 3: Neighbor-joining tree reconstruction of examined rhinolophids and hipposiderids COI sequences and based on the K2P matrix in Table S2. Branches are proportional to the number of mutational steps. Sequence names are composed of the first two letters of the genus, followed by the species name, the GenBank number (or field number for newly sequenced samples), and the region of origin. Samples from India are highlighted in bold face.

FIGURE 8. Portrait showing frontal and side views of the noseleaf structure of A) Rh. nippon (ZSI–NERC V/M/ERS/403) and B) Rh. sinicus (ZSI–NERC V/M/ERS/404) from the Western Himalayas.