New Himalayan bat blurs India-Pakistan divide

East Asian free-tailed bat, a new addition to India’s bat fauna. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

A new-to-science Himalayan bat has blurred the India-Pakistan divide.

A team of Indian scientists documented 29 species of bats during a series of surveys in the Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand segment of the Western Himalayas from 2017 to 2021. These included the Blandford’s fruit bat, Japanese greater horseshoe bat, Chinese horseshoe bat, Nepalese whiskered bat, Mandelli’s mouse-eared bat, Kashmir cave myotis, chocolate pipistrelle, and the eastern long-winged bat.

One of these 29 species, however, did not fit the taxonomic descriptions of the others or any other bats elsewhere on earth, apart from belonging to the genus Myotis or mouse-eared. A specimen of this undefined species was collected from Ansuya in Uttarakhand’s Chamoli district in May 2021.

An investigation revealed that this undefined specimen was the same as the one collected from Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa by Gabor Csorba, a Hungarian scientist, in 1998, but it was not previously described.

Dr Csorba of Budapest’s Hungarian Natural History Museum is one of the five authors of a study that described the Himalayan long-tailed myotis (Myotis himalaicus) as a new species of bat. The others are Uttam Saikia from the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) in Shillong, Rohit Chakravarty of Mysuru’s Nature Conservation Foundation, Mostaque Ahmed Laskar of St Anthony’s College in Shillong, and Manuel Ruedi of the Natural History Museum of Geneva.

Their study, describing the Himalayan long-tailed myotis and 28 other bats documented from Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, was published in the latest edition of Zootaxa, a zoological mega-journal. “Our team recorded the Himalayan long-tailed myotis during previous surveys in Uttarakhand’s Kedarnath Wildlife Sanctuary, but we did not collect any specimens,” Dr Saikia told The Hindu.

According to the study, the new species belongs to a group of morphologically similar species called the Myotis frater complex, which has a wide distribution from eastern China, Taiwan, central and southeastern Siberia, Korea, Japan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

“Apparently a native of the southern slopes of the Himalayas, the newly described bat species was thus far encountered in the deodar, pine, or cedar forest and appears uncommon,” the study said.

Addition to India’s bat fauna

The study also resulted in the globally data-deficient East Asian free-tailed bat (Tadarida insignis) being added to India’s bat fauna. Earlier, this species was mistaken for the European free-tailed bat (Tadarida teniotis) in all existing literature in India.

Based on a detailed study of the specimen collected from Uttarakhand and genetic analysis, the researchers concluded that this species is distributed in the Himalayan region of India, besides China, Taiwan, Japan, and the Korean Peninsula. The documentation of the East Asian free-tailed bat in the Western Himalayas extended its range eastward by about 2,500 km.

Another highlight of the study is the validation of the species status of another poorly understood species named Babu’s pipistrelle (Pipistrellus babu). This species was recorded more than a century ago from the Muree hills in present-day Pakistan. Due to morphological similarities, subsequent researchers considered it a synonym of another species, the Javan pipistrelle (Pipistrellus javanicus), a resident primarily of Southeast Asia.

The new study conclusively proved that Babu’s pipistrelle is a species distinct from the Javan pipistrelle and is distributed in Pakistan, India, and Nepal.

The study also provided the first specimen-based confirmation of the presence a few other bat species in India, namely Savi’s pipistrelle (Hypsugo savii) and Japanese greater horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus nippon). “This study is expected to have significant implications in the documentation and conservation of small mammalian fauna in the country and boost further studies in the Indian Himalayas,” ZSI Director Dhriti Banerjee said.

The revisionary study across Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand took the tally of Indian bat species to 135.

Published - June 06, 2025 12:43 pm IST