A new distributional record of Chaerephon Johorensis (Chiroptera: Mollosidae) at Belukar Bukit, Hulu Terengganu, Terengganu, Malaysia

Abstract

Globally, there are 100 species of Molossidae bats (Wilson & Reeder, 2005). Meanwhile in the Indomalayan region, there are 13 species of molossid bats (Corbet & Hill, 1992). Six molossid bats species exist in Southeast Asia in which four species, namely, Mops mops, Chaerephon johorensis, Chaerephon plicatus and Cheiromeles torquatus are found in Peninsular Malaysia (Kingston et al., 2006; Francis, 2008; Jayaraj et al., 2013; Abdullah, 2016). In Malaysian Borneo only three species are found namely Mops mops, Tadarida plicata and Cheiromeles torquatus (Payne et al., 1985; Phillips & Phillips, 2016). The molossid bat can be distinguished through the presence of a free tail spreading outside the uropatagium of the bats (Francis, 2008). This family of bats are among the less studied due to the low number of population and this has been shown in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List where 30% of its population are decreasing over a ten years’ time period (Csorba & Kingston, 2014).