Botta's bat

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Botta's bat
Systematics
Superfamily : Smooth-nosed (Vespertilionoidea)
Family : Smooth-nosed (Vespertilionidae)
Subfamily : True smooth-nosed (Vespertilioninae)
Tribe : Eptesicini
Genre : Broad-winged bats ( Eptesicus )
Type : Botta's bat
Scientific name
Eptesicus bottae
( Peters , 1869)

Botta's bat ( Eptesicus bottae ) belongs to the smooth-nosed family of bats (Vespertilionidae). It is common in the Arab region from Turkey to the Middle East.

features

Botta's bat is a medium-sized bat with a head-torso length of 48 to 64 millimeters and a weight of 12 to 23 grams. The tail reaches a length of 35 to 44.5 mm and the wingspan is 27 to 33 centimeters with a forearm length of 40 to 50 mm.

The bat's fur is black-brown and has silver-white tips on the upper side, which give it a “frosted” or “moldy” appearance. The underside is white-gray with an almost pure white throat and thus sharply demarcated from the top. The muzzle, the ears and the membranes are black-brown. The young animals are lighter than the adults and appear silvery-white on the back, while the belly is yellowish-white.

The ears are short, broad and rounded. They reach a length of 12 to 18.8 mm and have 4 transverse folds on the rear edge of the ear. The tragus is short and widens upwards, whereby it reaches its greatest width in the 2nd third of the height. The wings are narrow and the arm skin is attached to the toe root. The tail flight membrane has a distinct epiblema with a clearly visible web and the calcar (spur) is longer than half the length of the tail flight skin. The tip of the tail is 3.5 to 5 mm with the last two caudal vertebrae exposed.

distribution and habitat

The range of Botta's bat stretches from southern Turkey through Syria , Jordan and Israel along the west and south coast of the Arabian Peninsula to Oman and the United Arab Emirates . It also extends from the Black Sea ( Georgia ) and Iraq via Iran and along the coast of the Caspian Sea via Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to southern Kazakhstan , northern Afghanistan , Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan . In Europe, the species was found on the Greek island of Rhodes and it is assumed that it should also be found on the other offshore Greek islands.

As a habitat, the bats prefer semi-arid lowland areas with a steppe-like character, although they also occur in the mountains up to 1850 meters in height in Kurdistan and 2100 meters in Oman . They inhabit natural caves and crevices as well as ruins and buildings.

Way of life

In the dark, the bat hunts relatively high in open terrain, but also low above vegetation or in the light of street lamps. The flight of the animals is quick with rapid turns.

In the summer the species inhabits crevices on buildings and rocks. The females give birth to one or two young, the young are capable of flight from July. No more precise data are available about the winter roosts.

Systematics

The closely related broad-winged bat ( Eptesicus serotinus )

Botta's bat belongs to the genus of the broad-winged bat ( Eptesicus ), which consists of 32 species worldwide. In Europe, the broad-winged bat ( E. serotinus ) and the northern bat ( E. nilssoni ) live from this genus .

Threat and protection

The species is globally assessed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) as "Least Concern" due to its large distribution area and population size. A decline in the population and greater threats to the species are not known.

supporting documents

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h Wilfried Schober, Eckhard Grimmberger: The bats of Europe - know, determine, protect. 2nd updated edition, Franckh-Kosmos Verlags-GmbH, Stuttgart 1998; Pages 163-164. ISBN 3-440-07597-4 .
  2. ↑ a b c Eptesicus bottae in the endangered Red List species the IUCN 2011. Posted by: Aulagnier, S., Karataş, A. & Tsytsulina, K., 2008. Accessed December 17, 2011th
  3. ↑ Otto von Helversen : Eptesicus bottae (Mammalia, Chiroptera) on the island of Rhodes. Bonn zoological contributions 48 (1998), pp. 113–121 ( full text  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice .; PDF; 424 kB)@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.zfmk.de  

literature

  • Wilfried Schober, Eckhard Grimmberger: The bats of Europe - know, determine, protect. 2nd updated edition, Franckh-Kosmos Verlags-GmbH, Stuttgart 1998; Pages 163-164. ISBN 3-440-07597-4 .

Web links