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| Hill's Horseshoe Bat, Rhinolophus hilli Aellen, 1973 in Flanders, Frick, Nziza, ... et Webala, 2022. |
Abstract
Background:
For forty years, there has been growing uncertainty about whether Hill's horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus hilli) still persists in Nyungwe National Park, Rwanda. Only known from one small area within the National Park, R. hilli is listed as Critically Endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), based on its extremely small geographic range and presumed low number of mature individuals. Here, we present and describe bat species occurrence data contributed to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) that we collected as part of a long-term collaborative project to rediscover this lost species. This data paper describes the survey methods and findings resulting from cave roost surveys, capture surveys, and acoustic sampling of bat echolocation activity in Nyungwe National Park and surrounding areas in south-western Rwanda from 2013-2020 and their conservation relevance.
New information:
We report the discovery of an extant population of Hill's horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus hilli) in Nyungwe National Park, Rwanda, 40 years since the last reported observation of the species in 1981. We also report the first record of Lander's horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus landeri) in Nyungwe National Park and the first record of the Damara woolly bat (Kerivoula argentata) in Rwanda. The dataset contributed to GBIF and described in this paper includes 278 occurrence records from 10 bat species of five families detected at 71 locations in or near Nyungwe National Park, Rwanda. We include a description of the morphological descriptions of R. hilli and present the first acoustic echolocation signatures and phylogenetic information for this species.
Keywords: Afromontane rainforest, Albertine Rift, Nyungwe National Park, Rwanda
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| Sketches of noseleaf morphology of Rhinolophus hilli from photographs of the two individuals captured during this study. Drawings by Fiona Reid. |
Rhinolophus hilli Aellen, 1973
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| Notable records of bat species encountered in Nyungwe National Park. A, B Rhinolophus hilli, first observation of this species since 1981; C Rhinolophus landeri, first record of this species in Nyungwe National Park; D Rhinolophus clivosus, congeneric species found in Nyungwe for comparison; E Kerivoula argentata, first record of this species in Rwanda. |
Jon Flanders, Winifred F. Frick, Julius Nziza, Olivier Nsengimana, Prince Kaleme, Marie Claire Dusabe, Innocent Ndikubwimana, Innocent Twizeyimana, Sospeter Kibiwot, Pierre Ntihemuka, Tina L Cheng, Richard Muvunyi and Paul Webala. 2022. Rediscovery of the Critically Endangered Hill's Horseshoe Bat (Rhinolophus hilli) and Other New Records of Bat Species in Rwanda. Biodiversity Data Journal. 10: e83546. DOI: 10.3897/BDJ.10.e83546