PROCEEDINGS OF THE UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



issued 



SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 

 U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Vol. 99 Washington.: 1949 No. 3246 



MAMMALS OF NORTHERN COLOMBIA 

 PRELIMINARY REPORT NO. 5: BATS (CHIROPTERA) 



By Philip Hershkovitz 



No OTHER order of mammals is represented in northern Colombia 

 by such diversity of forms and abundance of individuals as the 

 Chiroptera, or bats. A hypothetical list of all the bats of that part 

 of Colombia comprising the departments of Magdalena, Atlantico, 

 Bolivar, Norte de Santander, and the Comisaria de la Guajira (map, 

 fig. 38) would enumerate at least 100 species. The list would neces- 

 sarily include nearly every species that occurs in both North and 

 South America, a number of West Indian bats, and many other 

 Neotropical species not heretofore recorded from northern Colombia 

 and Central America. 



The first published account of bats from northern Colombia was 

 presented in 1900, by Bangs. He recorded 10 species collected by 

 W. W. Brown, Jr., in the Santa Marta region, department of Mag- 

 dalena. A few months later J. A. Allen listed 22 species represented 

 by about 175 specimens collected by H. H. Smith in the same area. 

 Later, in 1904, in a formal report on all the mammals collected by 

 Smith, Allen repeated the earlier list of bats and added four more 

 species. This brought the total number of species known from the 

 Santa Marta region to 30. Sanborn, in 1932, identified a collection 

 of bats in the Carnegie Museum which included 16 species of bats 

 from the departments of Magdalena, Bolivar, and Norte de Santander. 

 Some of the Colombian specimens identified were duplicates of the 

 original Smith collection, but the greater number was collected by 

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