Bats of Southern and Central Africa

Bats of Southern and Central Africa:

A Biogeographic and Taxonomic Synthesis

Ara Monadjem, Peter John Taylor,

F P D (Woody) Cotterill and M Corrie Schoeman

Bats of Southern and Central Africa contains an extraordinary wealth of information ... It is a synthesis of over a century of research in the southern portion of the continent. The authors, some of the foremost scientists in the study of African bats, have done an exceptional job in making this information available to natural historians, bat enthusiasts, and scientists alike. There is vitality and precision to the text that clearly reflects their intimate knowledge of these animals in the field and their detailed studies of specimens in museums around the world.

—Steven M. Goodman, Field Museum of Natural History, USA

This full-colour book, published with support from the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI), includes chapters on the evolution, biogeography, ecology and echolocation of bats, and provides accounts for the 116 bat species known to occur in southern and central Africa. The identification of families, genera and species is aided by character matrices.

The species accounts provide descriptions, measurements, and diagnostic characters, as well as detailed information on the distribution, habitat, roosting habits, foraging ecology, and reproduction of each species. Photographs of the bats, including their skulls and dentition, and accurate time-expanded echolocation call spectrograms illustrate the accounts.

Over 600 pages are packed with information, about the status, evolution, ecology and echolocation of all the 116 known bat species occurring in the region. A significant proportion of these species rank amongst the most poorly known, and rarely encountered of vertebrates, not only in Africa but globally. An important contribution of this synthesis of knowledge is to single out areas of key research interest, especially to flag those populations whose biology, status and taxonomy remain unresolved and understudied.

The scientific strength of this book resides in its authenticity of the taxonomic and distribution data; underpinned by many thousands of museum specimens, each of which has been individually checked by at least one of the authors. These are preserved in at least 40 natural science collections in the world’s museums. Over the past 20 years, at least 75% of all published specimen records were re-checked through exhaustive searches of collections, which verified published data and uncovered a wealth of previously unpublished information. The species appendix summarizes each unique, collecting event– totalling over 6000 georeferenced records for 11 countries. These specimen data constitute the verifiable points of reference that underwrite the scientific authenticity of all taxonomic decisions (especially species delimitations) and geographic ranges mapped in this book from the GIS (Geographical Information System) database, which includes projected MAXENT models of specimen data to derived the species’ predicted distribution.

The knowledge compiled into Bats of Southern and Central Africa positions this book as an indispensible reference for the researcher studying any aspect of the taxonomy, biogeography, ecology and behaviour of these fascinating animals in Africa. It has an important bearing on conservation science, given keystone roles of bats as predators, pollinators, frugivores, and seed dispersers. The synthesis of museum data is especially valuable to inform reliable decisions in the arena of biodiversity conservation, pertinently protected area management, monitoring, and population viability analyses.

Ara Monadjem is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Swaziland; Peter Taylor is an Associate Professor in the Department of Ecology and Resource Management at the University of Venda. Woody Cotterill is the ERANDA Research Fellow at the Africa Earth Observatory Network (AEON) and Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Cape Town, and Corrie Schoeman is a Lecturer in the School of Biological and Conservation Sciences at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.

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