First record of the Pale-faced Bat Phylloderma stenops Peters , 1865 ( Chiroptera : Phyllostomidae ) in the province of Guayas , southwestern Ecuador

We report the first record of Phylloderma stenops in the province of Guayas, Ecuador. The specimen was captured in a heavily disturbed area, surrounded by small remnants of semi-deciduous lowland forests. We also present a predictive distribution map, constructed with the new and existing information for P. stenops in Ecuador and other countries in South America, showing that this species may occur in other areas where it has not yet been observed.

Trapping was conducted for one night, using two mist nets of 6 × 2.5 m each.These nets were placed above the river, from 18:00 h until approximately 06:00 h (following Kunz et al. 1996).Bats were identified according to the guidelines detailed in Albuja (1999) and Tirira (2007).In the case of P. stenops, in order to achieve identification to the subspecies level, we also analyzed specimens from eastern and western Ecuador deposited at the Mammalogy Division of the Museo de Zoología at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador-QCAZ.Specimens from El Retiro Ranch were collected under Permit No. 001-10 IC-FAU-DNB/MA, issued by the Ministerio del Ambiente of Ecuador.
Previous records of P. stenops in Ecuador were obtained from protected natural areas (e.g., Limoncocha Biological Reserve, Yasuní National Park, and Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve, in the Amazonian region; and La Chiquita Wildlife Refuge, Río Palenque Protected Forest, and Puyango Petrified Forest, in western Ecuador) or in disturbed areas such as banana plantations (Table 1).The previous locations in protected areas contrast with our record, which was located in a place heavily disrupted by livestock, with small remnants of riparian vegetation.Emmons and Feer (1997), however, reported that this species is found around streams and swamps or marshes, which coincides with our findings.Phylloderma stenops roosts in caves (Trajano 1982;Bredt et al. 1999;Esbérard et al. 2005) and feeds on fruit pulp, insects, and even small vertebrates (e.g., a large rat, apparently a Proechimys) (Jeanne 1970;LaVal 1977;Esbérard and Faria 2006;York 2008;Sampaio et al. 2008), resources that might be available at the forest remnants around El Retiro Ranch.
In recent years, there have been new records and extensions in the distribution of various species of bats in Southwestern Ecuador (Salas 2008;Carrera et al. 2010, Narváez et al. 2012;Tirira et al. 2012a, b;Salas et al. 2013), despite the rapid deterioration of its vegetation cover and expected loss of biodiversity (Dobson and Gentry 1991; Ministerio de Ambiente de Ecuador 2013).This region should be considered a priority for bat research and conservation programs, both in protected and unprotected forest areas.Although the occurrence of P. stenops in Guayas Province was predicted by Williams and Genoways (2008), the predictive distribution map presented for this species by Tirira (2007) restricted its occurrence to the northwestern rainforests and Amazonia.
Using data from museum specimens collected in Ecuador, Colombia, and Peru (Table 3), a predictive distribution model was generated using a Maximum Entropy approach (MaxEnt; Phillips et al. 2006).Eight replications of the model were run separating 15% of the occurrences in a test set for evaluation purposes by measuring the area under the ROC curve (AUC) in each evaluation set.The mean AUC for the model replications was 0.789 (SD = 0.156).The model predicts the distribution for P. stenops in protected areas where this bat has not yet been observed, as the Protected Forests as Chillanes-Bucay, Molleturo-Mollepongo, Cerro Blanco, or Isla Santay Recreation National Area in Guayas Province (Figure 2).These values also support the occurrence of P. stenops in transitional areas between deciduous and humid tropical, depicting a different scenario from those predicted for other phyllostomines based on a similar methodology (Narváez et al. 2012;Tirira et al. 2012a).

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Distribution of Phylloderma stenops in Ecuador.Black lines represent the current distribution as reported by Tirira (2007).The blue-shaded area represents the predictive distribution model proposed for Ecuador.Yellow dots represent known records with registered geographic coordinates.The yellow star represents our record near the town of Balzar.

Table 1 .
Annotated list of records of the Pale-faced Bat Phylloderma stenops in Ecuador.

Table 2 .
Cranial measurements (mm) taken from specimens of Phylloderma stenops in eastern and western Ecuador.The climatic envelope that the model predicted for this species included an annual mean temperature of 25.2°C (± 0.91) and a mean annual rainfall of 2,846 mm (± 617).The temperature at the new location reported here (25.6°C) is consistent with the predictions of the model.However, the model's prediction for precipitation is higher than the annual average of the new location (1,306 m), although this value is within the range of the model's precipitation (328-5,016 mm), which suggests that this location is likely near the edge of the climatic envelope.Also, four bioclimatic variables explained 55% of the variation seen in the model: the precipitation of the warmest quarter (15.2%, model average: 686.2 mm ± 217; new locality 879 mm), maximum temperature of warmest month (13.6 %, model average: 30.9°C ± 0.8; new locality 31.6°C),temperature annual range (13.5%, model average: 11.1°C ± 1.3; new locality 12.3°C), and mean monthly temperature range (12.5%, model average: 9.4°C ± 1.0; new locality 10.1°C).