Otonycteris hemprichii Peters 1859

Wilson, Don E. & Reeder, DeeAnn, 2005, Order Chiroptera - Family Vespertilionidae, Mammal Species of the World: a Taxonomic and Geographic Reference (3 rd Edition), Volume 1, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 451-529 : 481

Otonycteris hemprichii Peters 1859

Otonycteris hemprichii Peters 1859 , Monatsb. K. Preuss. Akad. Wiss. Berlin, 1859: 223.

Type Locality: Restricted by Kock (1969 a) to the Nile Valley between north of Aswan, Egypt and Chondek, Sudan .

Vernacular Names: Hemprich's Desert Bat.

Synonyms: Otonycteris brevimanus Severtzov 1873 ; Otonycteris cinerea Satunin 1909 ; Otonycteris jin Cheesman and Hinton 1924 ; Otonycteris leucophaeus Severtzov 1873 ; Otonycteris petersi Anderson and de Winton 1902 ; Otonycteris saharae Laurent 1936 ; Otonycteris ustus Fitzinger and Heuglin 1866 .

Distribution: The desert zone from Morocco and Niger through Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq to Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, and Kashmir.

Conservation: IUCN 2003 and IUCN / SSC Action Plan (2001) – Lower Risk (lc).

Discussion: Reviewed by Harrison and Bates (1991), Horácek (1991), and Bates and Harrison (1997). Several subspecies are sometimes recognized (e.g., Harrison and Bates, 1991; Koopman, 1994), but Horácek (1991) and Horácek et al. (2000) have argued that geographic variation in size and coloration is clinal and therefore does not support recognition of local populations as subspecies.