Congratulations to Vu Dinh and his co-authors on the description of new Hipposideros species from Vietnam. This new cryptic species from the armiger-species group, H. griffini is similar to H. armiger in its external characteristics but appears to have higher echolocation frequencies (76.6 to 79.2 kHz) compared to those of H. armiger (64.7–68.8 kHz). Hipposideros griffini also can be generally distinguished based on its smaller body size, craniodental, skull and teeth compared to H. armiger. Presently, H. griffini is only known from two disjunct localities in Vietnam: Cat Ba National Park, Cat Hai District, and Chu Mom Ray National Park, Kon Tum Province. The former is situated on an offshore island in northern Vietnam and the latter on the mainland Vietnam. Both, H. armiger and H. griffini can be found in sympatry in Vietnam. This further highlights the importance of incorporating multiple datasets such as morphology, echolocation and genetics in discovering cryptic bat species in Southeast Asia.
A new species of Hipposideros (Chiroptera: Hipposideridae) from Vietnam
Author(s): Vu Dinh Thong, Sebastien J. Puechmaille, Annette Denzinger, Christian Dietz, Gabor Csorba,
Paul J. J. Bates, Emma C. Teeling, and Hans-Ulrich Schnitzler
Journal of Mammalogy, 93(1):1-11. 2012.
Contact: thong@iebr.ac.vn for reprints
