O’SHEA, CRYAN & BOGAN: UNITED STATES BAT SPECIES OF CONCERN 
15 
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Base map: Includes geospatial data 'World Countries', 'World Administrative Divisions', and World Ocean Backgrounds' from ESRI, Redlands, CA. Data source: Islands of occurrence mapped from ESRI data. 
0 5 10 20 30 40 Kilometers 
Coordinate System: Puerto Rico StatePlane Virgin 
Islands St Croix FIPS 5202 
Projection: Lambert Conformal Conic 
Datum: Puerto Rico 
False Easting: 500,000.0000 
False Northing: 100.000.0000 
Central Meridian: -66.4333 
Standard Parallel 1:18.0333 
Standard Parallel 2:18.4333 
Latitude Of Origin: 17.8333 
Units: Foot US 
Figure 4. Approximate distribution of the red fruit bat, Stenoderma rufum. Islands where the species occurs are col¬ 
ored yellow. 
S. rufum darioi of Puerto Rico (Hall and Tamsitt, 1968), and S. rufum rufum of St. John and St. 
Thomas (Genoways and Baker, 1972). 
The taxonomic history of the red fruit bat has been described by Anthony (1918), Hall and Bee 
(1960), and Gannon et al. (2005). This species was first described in 1813 from a single specimen 
in the Paris Museum; the locality from which the specimen was collected was unknown, but incor¬ 
rectly speculated to be Egypt. In the early 1900s, the species was re-discovered based on relative¬ 
ly recent fossil remains from caves in Puerto Rico by Anthony (1918) who pointed out that the orig¬ 
inal description was based on a specimen in the flesh. However, the red fruit bat was thought to be 
extinct until living specimens were verified in 1957 (Hall and Bee, 1960; Gannon et al., 1992, 
2005). Genoways and Baker (1972) provided a complete taxonomic synonymy of past scientific 
names applied to the red fruit bat. The generic name Stenoderma stems from two Greek words 
meaning “narrow” and “skin”, and the specific epithet is from the Latin word meaning “red”. Other 
English common names include red fig-eating bat (preferred by species experts) and Desmaresf s 
fig-eating bat; a Spanish common name is murcielago frutero native. 
Habitats.— On Puerto Rico, the red fruit bat is best known from tropical rain forest of the 
Luquillo Mountains of the El Yunque National Forest, but on St. John records are for drier, mixed 
habitats. Of the three major life zones in the Luquillo Mountains of Puerto Rico, habitat use appears 
to be limited to the lower elevation tabonuco (Dacryodes excelsa ) rain forest (Gannon and Willig, 
1994). Red fruit bats have been captured at heights up to three meters above paths and streams, and 
above the forest canopy (as summarized by Genoways and Baker, 1972), as well as at the mouths 
