Images attached to GBIF records (field photographs), from . Open licences; click for the record.
Seychelles Free-tailed Bat
Chaerephon pusillus (Miller, 1902)
Also calledSeychellen-Bulldogfledermaus (deu) · Tadaride des Seychelles (fra)
Mops pusillus is a species of bat in the family Molossidae. It is found on islands off the coast of east Africa.
Descriptions from checklists and floras indexed by GBIF
activity
Activity patterns. The Seychelles Free-tailed Bat is nocturnal. Roosts are mostly associated with public buildings in the French colonial style, as these have enclosed attics.
Molossidae
biology_ecology
Habitat. Recorded only in synanthropic situations from sea level to elevations of c. 400 m.
Molossidae
biology_ecology
Movements, Home range and Social organization. Seychelles Free-tailed Bats roost communally in small colonies. Both maternity and mixed-sex colonies have been observed. Based on interviews with people occupying buildings with roosts, colonies may migrate during the cold season.
Molossidae
description
Descriptive notes. Head-body 52 - 57 mm, tail 27 - 36 mm, ear 15 - 18 mm, hindfoot 4 - 6 mm, forearm 36 - 39 mm; weight 5 - 12 g. The Seychelles Free-tailed Bat differs from the Little Free-tailed Bat (C. pumilus) in having distinctly smaller head, as well as in fine differences in external morphology of head, rostrum, nostrils, and ear structure. Pelage is short, lighter brown above than in the Little Free-tailed Bat, and medium brown below, darker than in the Little Free-tailed Bat; white flank-stripe commonly found in the Little Free-tailed Bat is absent in the Seychelles Free-tailed Bat. Upperlip has 5 - 7 or more well-defined wrinkles on each side and many spoon-hairs. Ears are medium brown and relatively small, as in the Little Free-tailed Bat, also containing interaural pouch which houseserectile crest in males. Antitragus is somewhat rounded and arch-shaped, with slight anterior elongation, as opposed to more angular in the Little Free-tailed Bat. Wings are medium brown; tail membrane is dark brown. Nostrils and head are somewhat smaller, and skull is shorter and more pointed, than in the Little Free-tailed Bat. Anterior palate encloses paired palatal foramina. M ” has thir
Molossidae
From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA), quoted section by section
Description
The bat has a blackish-brown dorsum, brown throat, and dark brown chest. It has a dark brown venter, with a small white mid-ventral patch in rare cases. Comorian populations of the bat have a distinct whitish or beige strip of hairs at the base of the wings. There is a possibility of inter-island seasonal variation in reproduction.
Range & habitat
The bat is found in the Comoro Islands and Seychelles. On Comoros, it was not observed roosting in natural sites, but instead mostly in the attics of public buildings. Moreover, the bats were observed to roost in older-style colonial buildings, but not in modern buildings. Their roosting may also be seasonal, as they have been observed abandoning roosts during the cold season.
== References ==
Where it has been recorded
Recorded sightings
—
geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.
Drag the globe to turn it. Dots are where records exist, not a range map; darker means more records.
In the stacks
Searching the stacks…
Every page naming Chaerephon pusillus in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →
From the GBIF Backbone Taxonomy and occurrence records (GBIF.org), with Wikipedia and the Source Library. GBIF species 5787333.