Hipposideridae Temporal range: Eocene to present
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Commerson's leaf-nosed bat (Hipposideros commersoni) | |
Scientific classification | |
Domain: | Eukaryota |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Chordata |
Class: | Mammalia |
Order: | Chiroptera |
Superfamily: | Rhinolophoidea |
Family: | Hipposideridae Lydekker, 1891 |
Type genus | |
Hipposideros Gray, 1831
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Genera | |
See text | |
Synonyms | |
The Hipposideridae are a family of bats commonly known as the Old World leaf-nosed bats. While it has often been seen as a subfamily, Hipposiderinae, of the family Rhinolophidae, it is now more generally classified as its own family.[1] Nevertheless, it is most closely related to Rhinolophidae within the suborder Yinpterochiroptera.[2]
The Hipposideridae contain 10 living genera and more than 70 species, mostly in the widespread genus Hipposideros.[3] In addition, several fossil genera are known; the oldest fossils attributed to the family are from the middle Eocene of Europe.[4] In their 1997 Classification of Mammals, Malcolm C. McKenna and Susan K. Bell proposed a division of Hipposideridae (called Rhinonycterinae in their work) into three tribes, one with two subtribes,[5] but these tribes turned out to be non-monophyletic and have been abandoned.[1] A different classification was proposed by Hand and Kirsch in 2003.[6] In 2009, Petr Benda and Peter Vallo proposed a separate tribe, Triaenopini, for the genera Triaenops, Paratriaenops, and possibly Cloeotis,[7] synonymised in a 2014 revision (Foley, et al.) that elevated the family Rhinonycteridae.[8] The Hipposideridae have many different families, previously confused to be the same for their similar appearance. The Hipposideridae fulvus is very similar to the Hipposideridae Pomona, which were a part of the same family in the past. The macrobullatus, considered to be a subspecies of the Hipposideridae are also part of a different family. Among the Hipposideridae species, there is an increased amount of mitochondrial differentation, possibly leading to these subspecies being intermixed and confused as one.[9][10][11]
The genera included in Hipposideridae are:[12]
(Note that genus Paracoelops was previously listed for Vietnam is now a synonym of Hipposideros pomona)