New records of Niceforo’s big-eared bat, Trinycteris nicefori (Sanborn, 1949) (Chiroptera, Phyllostomidae), from the state of Maranhão, Brazil

• Main Authors: Amanda Cristiny da Silva Lima, Fabio Henrique Souza Cardoso, Samira Brito Mendes, Elmary Costa Fraga, Maria Claudene Barros
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Pensoft Publishers 2018-10-01
• Series: ZooKeys
• Online Access: https://zookeys.pensoft.net/articles.php?id=26538

Niceforo’s big-eared bat, Trinycteris nicefori (Sanborn, 1949), is a monotypic species which has been recorded in a number of Brazilian states, but has a disjunct distribution in this country. This study presents the first record of T. nicefori in the Brazilian state of Maranhão. The specimens were collected in the municipalities of Godofredo Viana and Cândido Mendes, in fragments of the Amazon forest. One male (forearm: 38.00 mm, weight: 6 g) and one female (39.68 mm, 8 g) specimens were collected. The specimens presented chestnut-colored fur, and a chin with a pair of dermal pads arranged in a V-shape, without a central papilla. The COI gene sequences were plotted in the BOLD Systems platform, which confirmed the morphological identification of the species, with a 99.1% similarity in the male, and 99.4% in the female to existing sequences. This record extends the known distribution of T. nicefori in Brazil by approximately 310 km to the most eastern part of the Amazon Biome.