Contribución al conocimiento morfológico de los murciélagos del género rhogeessa (Allen, 1866) (Chiroptera: Vespertilionidae) en Colombia

Abstract

The genus of insectivorous bats Rhogeessa, belonging to the Vespertilionidae family, has ten species for the Neotropics, of which: R. hussoni, R. io, R. minutilla and R. velilla are represented in South America. For Colombia, the presence of R. io and R. minutilla is recognized in the Andean, Caribbean, Orinoquia and Pacific bioregions, covering altitudes from sea level to 2,600 meters. In spite of the above, there is no precision on the geographical limits of the distribution of these species in the country and, to date, the morphology of these taxa has not been evaluated, so they continue to use inconsistent and ambiguous characters in the determination. In this work, the morphological and morphometric revision of the species is made from specimens deposited in biological collections, evaluation of external and cranial characters, by means of principal component analysis (PCA) and analysis of variance (ANOVA), at the same time determines the potential distribution by means of the environmental variation analysis of the collection location in the MAXENT program and with the help of the Geographical Information System. We found a variation of R. io in body and cranial size as well as dorsal and ventral coloration that changes along the altitudinal gradient. Finally, a key is presented based on the characteristics of Colombian specimens for the identification of the genus Rhogeessa in the country.