New Cave Bat Species in Sri Lanka Highlights Need for Research

During the 18th and 19th centuries when Sri Lanka was a British colony, many British naturalists studied the island’s rich biodiversity and contributed to profiling the same. Tea planter W.W.A. Phillips was one of them, a man who was particularly interested in mammals, and eventually published the “Manual of the Mammals of Sri Lanka” in 1932. A chapter in his book describes the island’s bat fauna, including the Sri Lankan woolly bat (Kerivoula malpasi), a species then new to science.

Now, after 90 years since Phillips’ discovery, young researcher Tharaka Kusuminda, a PhD candidate at the University of Ruhuna, and his team have described a new bat species from Sri Lanka, naming it Miniopterus phillipsi in honor of the British naturalist. Their findings are reported in the journal Acta Chiropterologica.

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