Barbastella leucomelas darjelingensis (Photo Claire Wordley)
Research to understand bat diversity and bat responses to changing landscapes is often hampered by a lack of echolocation call libraries in the tropics. Here we publish the calls of fifteen species from five families found in the southern Western Ghats of India, with five species having their call published here for the first time. Several species were not predicted by IUCN range maps to live in this area, most notably Barbastella leucomelas darjelingensis which was found over 2,000 km from its known range (temperate northern India) in the steamy rainforests of the south. Several of the species published here range across South and South East Asia, and we describe how their echolocation calls vary in frequency across the continent. We hope that this call library will facilitate more research and monitoring of bats in South India, and encourage the creation of more call libraries across the Indian subcontinent.
Claire FR Wordley, Eleni K Foui, Divya Mudappa, Mahesh Sankaran, and John D Altringham (2014). Acoustic identification of bats in the Southern Western Ghats, India. Acta Chiropterologica: 16 (1), 213-222. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3161/150811014X683408
http://www.bioone.org/doi/pdf/10.3161/150811014X683408 N.B. – Paper will be open access shortly
