Morphology of post-calcarial lobe in bats and its variation in Eptesicus “serotinus” (Mammalia)
I. Zagorodniuk
Taras Shevchenko National University of Luhansk
2, Oboronna St., Luhansk 91011, Ukraine
zoozag@ukr.net
Analysis of variation of post-calcarial lobe (PCL) in bats of Ukrainian fauna demonstrates presence of essential differences just for comparison of genera. PCL achieves a high degree of development (wide and keeled) just in 3 of 10 genera, namely Nyctalus, Pipistrellus, and Vespertilio. Intraspecific variation with appearance of wide PCL with own cartilaginous skeleton has been revealed and described for East-Ukrainian Eptesicus serotinus (s. l.), in spite of the opinion that absence of PCL is generic attribute of Eptesicus in a whole. This population of serotine bat with advanced PCL is described as a new taxon, Eptesicus lobatus sp. n., which can be considered as allospecies of Eptesicus serotinus (s. l.) group. It is supposed, that new taxon is widely distributed to the east of Ukraine and presented in the investigated area by marginal (westernmost) populations of the species. Significant morphometric differences of new taxon from E. serotinus were not revealed.
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Keywords: bats, Eptesicus, taxonomy, ecomorphology, biogeography, Ukraine
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