Rhinolophus perniger Hodgson, 1843

7. Rhinolophus perniger Hodgson, 1843 View in CoL

(Northern Woolly horseshoe bat)

New material: 1 M, 31.05.2017, Barog Tunnel, Solan District , Himachal Pradesh , V /M/ERS/ 400 and three relased individuals at Mandal , Uttarakhand .

Morphological description of specimens: The largest rhinolophid in the Indian subcontinent with average forearm length of 71.7 mm in the Western Himalayan specimens. The forearm of the released individuals averaged 71.59 mm.A distinctive bat with long woolly fur, dorsally dark brown to black with lighter tips in some hairs giving a frosted appearance.Ventral fur was little lighter,but in some individuals, this was not noticeable.Horseshoe was broad, extending beyond the margins of upper lip. There was a deep median emargination on the horseshoe dividing it into two halves. The sella base had pronounced circular basal lappets on either side.The connecting process of the sella was rounded off downward and forward. The lancet was broadly rounded off. The lower lip had only one mental groove.

DNA: We obtained 713 bp of the COI gene from a single individual captured in the Barog tunnel (M 2204/ V /M/ERS/400), which is the first DNA evidence from a Himalayan specimen and representing topotypical material of Rh. perniger . This north Indian sample was very similar (within 2% sequence divergence) to other samples from China or the Indochinese Peninsula (e.g., northern Laos, M1210), but were more distinct (≥ 3% sequence divergence) from individuals representing the Lesser Woolly horseshoebat Rh. beddomei sampled in Sri Lanka (GB HM541415 View Materials ) or southern India (GB OQ 921889) ( Fig. 3 View FIGURE 3 ).

Locality records and ecological notes: Himachal Pradesh:Arki (900 m), Shalaghat (1200 m) and Barog tunnel (1560 m) in Solan district ( Saikia et al. 2011; present study). Uttarakhand: Jharipani (1410 m) in Dehradun district; Maldevta (846 m) in Tehri–Garhwal district; Pangot (1976 m) in Nainital district; Mussoorie (2000 m) in Dehradun district ( Chakravarty et al. 2020; Dobson 1878).

A lone roosting male individual was caught inside Barog tunnel. Previous observations from Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand also indicate its solitary roosting habit in caves and abandoned man–made structures ( Saikia et al. 2011; Chakravarty et al. 2020). The peak call frequency of the Himachal individual was 31–32 kHz which is similar to that reported from Uttarakhand ( Chakravarty et al. 2020). This frequency is the lowest amongst the rhinolophid bats in the study area, thereby aiding unambiguous acoustic identification in the field.

Taxonomic note: Rh. luctus , a member of the trifoliatus group ( Csorba et al. 2003), was long considered as a polytypic and widespread species found across most of the Oriental Region. However, based on a combination of chromosomal, acoustic, bacular and morphological characters several subspecies were recently elevated to species rank and few new taxa were recognized (e.g., Volleth et al. 2015, 2017), including the Indomalayan Rh. perniger . Our new, topotypical genetic data support that Himalayan Rh. perniger and most Chinese specimens are indeed highly similar and should be conspecific ( Fig. 3 View FIGURE 3 ) as they are phylogenetically distinct from the smaller, South Indian and Sri Lankan Rh. beddomei ( Srinivasulu et al. 2023) . However, more extensive comparative studies, notably from the Sundaland (terra typica of Rh. luctus is Java), are still needed to firmly establish relationships within the whole Rh. luctus species complex ( Volleth et al. 2017).