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Zookeys 1161: 129-141 (2023)

doi: 10.3897/zookeys. | 161.99487 RESEARCH ARTICLE Z00Ke y S

https:/ / ZOO keys. pensoft.net Launched to accelerate biodiversity research

Confirmation of the existence of
Himalayan long-eared bats, Plecotus homochrous
(Chiroptera, Vespertilionidae), in China

Pengfei Luo!?, Xiangyang He! , Yuzhi Zhang’, Jianping Ye?, Min Guo'!,
Jin Deng', Chunhui Zhou', Jiang Zhou’, Libiao Zhang'

| Guangdong Key Laboratory of Animal Conservation and Resource Utilization, Guangdong Public Labora-
tory of Wild Animal Conservation and Utilization, Institute of Zoology, Guangdong Academy of Sciences,
Guangzhou 510260, China 2 School of Karst Science, State Engineering Technology Institute for Karst De-
sertification Control, Guizhou Normal University, Guiyang 550001, China 3 Guangxi Guilin Maoershan
National Nature Reserve Administration, Guilin 541000, China

Corresponding authors: Jiang Zhou (zhoujiang@ioz.ac.cn); Libiao Zhang (zhanglb@giz.gd.cn)

Academic editor: Wieslaw Bogdanowicz | Received 2 January 2023 | Accepted 6 April 2023 | Published 11 May 2023
https://z0obank. org/COD34672-5AC0-4AA8-8F6C-8D9IAC3972F15

Citation: Luo P, He X, Zhang Y, Ye J, Guo M, Deng J, Zhou C, Zhou J, Zhang L (2023) Confirmation of the
existence of Himalayan long-eared bats, Plecotus homochrous (Chiroptera, Vespertilionidae), in China. ZooKeys 1161:
129-141. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1161.99487

Abstract

The existence of Himalayan long-eared bats, Plecotus homochrous (Chiroptera, Vespertilionidae), in China
has not been previously confirmed. In this study, four bats captured with harp traps from two sites in the
Maoershan National Nature Reserve in Guangxi, China were investigated. These bats have long, wide
auricles, each with a prominent tragus. The length of each auricle is about the same as that of a forearm.
Hairs on the ventral fur have a dark base with mixed grey and yellowish tips; those on the dorsal fur also
have a dark base and are bicolored with brown tips. The thumbs are very short. A concavity is present in
the front of the dorsal side of the cranium. Based on morphological characteristics and phylogeny using
Cyt 6 gene sequences, these bats were identified as P homochrous, thus confirming the existence of Hima-

layan long-eared bats in China.

Keywords

cyt 6 gene, morphology, echolocation calls

* These authors contributed equally to this study.

Copyright Pengfei Luo et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0),
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

130 Pengfei Luo et al. / ZooKeys 1161: 129-141 (2023)

Introduction

As bats of various species of the genus Plecotus E. Geoffroy, 1818 are morphologically
very similar (Spitzenberger et al. 2006), taxonomic classification of them is very difh-
cult. In 1847, Hodgson described the bats that he found in Nepal as Himalayan Long-
eared bats (Plecotus homochrous Hodgson, 1847). However, this taxon was later consid-
ered a subspecies of P auritus (Linnaeus, 1758) (Ellerman and Morrison-Scott 1951;
Hanak 1966; Corbet 1978; Koopman 1993; Wang 2003; Simmons 2005). Horacek
et al. (2000) proposed that P homochrous should be considered an independent species
based on its biogeographical characteristics. Later, Spitzenberger et al. (2006) revised
the taxonomic status of all species in the genus based on results of morphological and
molecular analyses and classified P homochrous as a distinct species.

The first evidence for the existence of P homochrous in China was reported by
Wang (2003) who identified the bats he found in Xinping County, Yunnan Prov-
ince, China as P auritus homochrous. However, this record was not acknowledged by
Simmons (2005), Wilson and Mittermeier (2019), Jiang et al. (2021), and Wei et al.
(2021). Therefore, the existence of P homochrous in China remained uncertain, and
P. homochrous were believed to occur only in the southern Himalayas and Southeast
Asia, including northern Pakistan, northwestern India, Nepal, and Vietnam (Wilson
and Mittermeier 2019; Dai et al. 2020). In this study, we confirm the existence of
P. homochrous in China and report on their morphological characteristics, phylogenetic
relationships, and echolocation call patterns.

Materials and methods

Sample collection

Bats examined in this study were captured from the Maoershan National Nature Reserve
(25°48'N—25°58'N, 110°20'E—110°35'E), which covers an area of 170.09 km? of moun-
tains with varied vegetation types. Although some areas at lower elevations have been
transformed into bamboo forests, most of the reserve is undisturbed with primary for-
ests, especially at higher elevations (Huang and Jiang 2002). Four Plecotus bats were cap-
tured from two sites (Fig. 1; 25°26'20"N, 110°53'32"E, 2002 m a.s.l. and 25°54'42"N,
110°27'14"E, 1708 m a.s.l.) with harp traps during a bat survey along an elevational
gradient in June 2022. These bat specimens, designated GD-221656, GD-221657, GD-
221658, and GD-221659, were preserved in anhydrous ethanol after all examinations
were completed. These specimens are stored at the Guangdong Institute of Zoology.

Morphological measurements and recording of echolocation calls

Morphological measurements of bats were performed with electronic digital
calipers according to Dai et al. (2020). Definitions of the measurements are as

Himalayan Long-eared Bats, Plecotus homochrous, in China Fe

follows: FA, forearm length; T, tail length; HB, head and body length; Thsu,
thumb length excluding claws; Thcu, thumb length including claws; Tib, tibia
length; Hfsu, hindfoot length excluding claws; Hfcu, hindfoot length including
claws; Trag, tragus length; E, ear length; STOTL, total length of the skull; CBL,
condylobasal length; CCL, condylo-canine length; MAW, mastoid width; CM?L,
maxillary toothrow length; CCW, width across upper canines; M°’M°W, width
across upper molars; CM,L, mandibular tooth row length; ML, mandible length;
UJH, lower jaw height; BCW, braincase width; BCH, braincase height; ZYW,
zygomatic width; RL, rostral length; Bulla, diameter of tympanic bulla; IOW,
interorbital width. The wing shape of each bat was recorded by tracing on paper,
followed by a determination of wing loading and wingspan ratio using IMAGE J
according to the method of Norberg and Rayner (1987). The criteria of Bininda-
Emonds and Russell (1994) and Aldridge and Rautenbach (1987) were used for

80°E 90°E 100°E 110°E 120°E

* Plecotus ariel

® P. homochrous from this study

DP kozlovi @ 2 homochrous from Wang (2003)
%& P.ognevi @ 2. homochrous from Fukui et al. (2020)
@ P strelkovi @ P. homochrous from GBIF

of P. taivanus
A P. wardi
2? Psp

Yf4 P. homochrous from UCN
—---- Provincial boundary

Elevation (m)
- = 8424
Country boundary -415

0) 500
km

,

Figure |. Distribution of Plecotus bats in China and other regions. The map shows the southernmost
regions, not the entire China, where Plecotus bats have been found.

132 Pengfei Luo et al. / ZooKeys 1161: 129-141 (2023)

classification of wingspan ratio and wing loading as follows: wingspan ratio: low,
6.1-7.3; high, >7.3; wing loading: very low, <6.45 N/m’; low, 6.45—10.3 N/m’;
high, >10.3 N/m’.

Morphological measurements of six Plecotus species (Suppl. material 1: table S1)
were used for the principal component analysis (PCA) using ‘prcomp’ function of the
R package ‘stats’ (R Core Team 2021). The following 10 craniodental measurements
were assessed by PCA: STOTL, CBL, MAW, CM2?L, M°M°W, CM,L, BCW, BCH,
Bulla, and IOW (Suppl. material 1: table S2).

Echolocation calls of four bats were recorded using a handheld ultrasound de-
tector (UltraSoundGate 116Hm, Avisoft Bioacoustis, Germany) when they were al-
lowed to fly in a room of 5 x 5 x 2.5 m’ in size. Ultrasound spectrograms were gener-
ated using the 512-point Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) algorithm with 96.87% of the
frequency overlapped with a Hanning window. A total of 30 pulses were arbitrarily
selected from each bat for determination of start frequency, end frequency, frequency
of maximum energy, and pulse duration using the Batsound software (Pettersson
Elektronik AB, Uppsala, Sweden). The values were determined based on the second
(highest energy) harmonic and statistically compared with those of the study from
Vietnam (Dai et al. 2020) using ‘kruskal.test’ function of the R package ‘stats’ (R
Core Team 2021) as the data were non-normally distributed as determined by the
Shapiro-Wilk and normal Q-Q plot.

Phylogenetic analyses

To further identify the bats, DNA was extracted from a small piece of the wing
membrane of each bat, and polymerase chain reaction was performed to amplify a
portion of the mitochondrial cytochrome 6 gene (Cyt 4) using primers Cyt 0-F (5'-
TAG AAT ATC AGC TTT GGG TG-3’) and Cyt 6-R (5'-AAA TCA CCG TTG
TAC TTC AAC-3’) (Li et al. 2006). Each PCR was conducted in a volume of 50 pl
containing 8 pl of genomic DNA, 2 ul each of primer F and R (10 mM each), 13 pl
of water, and 25 pl of HiFi DNA polymerase master mix. PCR conditions were as
follows: 5 min at 94 °C, followed by 10 cycles of 60 s at 94 °C, 30 s at 46 °C, and
62 s at 72 °C; 25 cycles of 60 s at 94 °C, 40s at 50 °C (+0.3 °C/cycle), and 60 s at
72 °C; 35 cycles of 60 s at 94 °C, 40 s at 54 °C, 60 s at 72 °C, and final elongation
for 10 min at 72 °C.

The obtained sequences were deposited in GenBank under the following accession
numbers: OP425735 (GD-221657), OP425736 (GD-221659), and OP425737 (GD-
221656). No sequences were obtained from bat GD-221658 because of a failure in
DNA isolation. The sequences were aligned with those of 30 Cyt 6 genes (Table 4) from
GenBank for phylogenetic analysis using MAFFT software (Katoh and Standley 2013).
Selection of the best-fit nucleotide substitution model was performed by MODELF-
INDER (Kalyaanamoorthy et al. 2017), and the phylogenetic tree was constructed us-
ing the maximum-likelihood (ML) method in IQ-TREE with 5,000 ultrafast bootstraps
(Nguyen et al. 2015).

Himalayan Long-eared Bats, Plecotus homochrous, in China 133

Results

Morphological characteristics

In PCA, the percentages of explained variance of the first two principal components
(PC1 and PC2) were 65.8% and 12.3%, respectively, with a cumulative percentage
of 78.1% (Suppl. material 1: table S2). PC1 results were derived from all measure-
ments except those of tympanic bullae (Bulla) and interorbital width (IOW), whereas
results of PC2 were from analysis of Bulla and IOW (Table 1). PCA plots revealed that
the four investigated bats were clustered with P homochrous from Vietnam but were
widely separated from other bats including P ariel (Thomas, 1911), P kozlovi (Bobrin-
ski, 1926), PR ognevi (Kishida, 1927), P strelkovi (Spitzenberger, 2006), and P wardi
(Thomas, 1911). This result suggests that these four bats are P homochrous.
Morphologically, the bats have long, wide auricles, each with a prominent tra-
gus (Fig. 3B). The length of each auricle is about the same as that of a forearm

Table |. External and cranial measurements (in mm) of Plecotus homochrous bats.

Guangxi, China Lao Cai, Vietnam
This study Dai et al. 2020

Body sites GD-221656(4) / GD-221657(3) / IEBR-M-5469(9) / IEBR-M-5472(9) /
measured GD-221658(4) / GD-221659(@) IEBR-M-5483(4) / HNHM202011(@)
FA 37.30 / 37.28 / 37.36 / 38.49 38.09 / 37.36 / 37.75 / 37.58
al) 39.63 / 42.01 / 44.15 / 43.12 49.00 / 45.00 / 44.00 / 47.00
HB 50.49 / 50.75 / 46.92 / 45.77 45.00 / 42.50 / 37.50 / 42.50
Thsu 3,82 / 3.28 / 3.84 / 4.46 5.34/ 4.78 /5.11/ 4.89
Thcu 4.86 /4.14/ 4.73 / 5.61 6.22 / 5.89 / 5.71 / 5.64
Tib 17.84 / 17.02 / 17.07 / 18.49 17.40 / 18.00 / 16.80 / 17.00
Hfsu 7.96 / 8.18 / 8.56 / 8.38 7.98 17.641 7.961 7.99
Hfcu 8.68 / 8.70 / 9.03 / 9.11 9.18 / 8.32 / 8.85 / 8.86
Trag 17.29 / 14.54/ 15.76 / 15.88 18.00 / 17.00 / 18.00 / 18.00
E 36.43 / 38.85 / 38.12 / 39.12 38.00 / 39.00 / 37.00 / 39.50
SLOTL 16.02 / 16.34 / 16.43 / 16.37 16.03 / 16.00 / 15.35 / 15.61
CBL 14.92 / 14.94/ 15.21 / 14.98 14.79 / 14.88 / 14.28 / 14.45
COM, 14.13 / 14.20 / 14.45 / 14.23 14.38 / 14.33 / 13.74 / 14.05
MAW 8.70 / 8.81 / 8.69 / 8.79 8.95 / 8.94 / 8.41 / 8.70
CMPL 512-65. 137°5.197' 5,08 533° 5,02.) 505-7 5:23
CCW BSL Sod O27 1 OO 3:65:1399 13.56 73.52
M?-M? SPL DLL OL EOD 6.00 / 5.50 / 5.56 / 5.63
CM,L 5.74/5.60/5.75/ 5.65 5:70 £6.00 15.27-4 5.27
ML 9.67 £9:697 995-971 10.38 / 10.54/ 9.90 / 9.96
UJH 2.78 / 2.88 / 2.90 / 2.91 3.01 / 3.16 / 2.86 / 3.01
BCW 2047S 34S TN EEO V./04 Toot FASE TSS
BCH SiOl 7 92975, 25F 5.07 589.1 5.99 1 3:83.10 5:86
ZYW 8.13 / 8.27 / —/ 8.22 8.32 /—/—/8.12
RL 9.92af 3.21 43.47 £3.25 4.02 / 3.97 / 3.64 / 4.05
Bulla 4.32 14.22 14.20 / 4.43 4.41 /4,.25/4.18/ 4.47
IOW 3.68 / 3.43 / 3.31 / 3.56 3.63 | 3.76 / 3.63 / 3.69

134 Pengfei Luo et al. / ZooKeys 1161: 129-141 (2023)

(Table 1). The bases of the two ears intersect at the forehead (Fig. 2A). Hairs on
the ventral fur have a dark base with mixed grey and yellowish tips; those on the
dorsal fur also have a dark base and are bicolored with brown tips (Fig. 2A, C).
The facial fur is dark, and the skin is pink (Fig. 2B). The thumbs are very short
(Fig. 2C). The wing membrane is attached to the base of toes, and there is a small,
triangular protrusion at the base of the tail membrane near the heel (keeled calcar)
(Fig. 2A). The dental formula is I 2/3, C 1/1, P 2/3, and M3/3. The first upper
incisor is double pointed and higher than the second upper incisor. The second
upper premolar is absent (Fig. 3B). The cranium is 16.02—16.43 mm in length and
8.13-8.27 mm in zygomatic width (Table 1), with a slight sagittal crest, which
is the smallest among all Plecotus species. The bullae are medium-sized (diameter
4,20-4.43 mm). A concavity is present in the front of the dorsal side of the cra-
nium (Fig. 3C). The orbital ridge is in the anterior part of the eye socket (Fig. 3A).
All these morphological characteristics are identical to those of P homochrous from
Vietnam (Dai et al. 2020).

Echolocation calls and wing characteristics

Echolocation calls of the four bats are of frequency-modulation (FM) with multiple
harmonics. The maximum energy of calls is mostly in the second harmonic (Fig. 4).
Sound parameters of echolocation calls vary among the four individuals. Start fre-
quency, end frequency, frequency of maximum energy, and pulse durations are 74.0

Figure 2. Pictures of Plecotus homochrous (GD-221656) examined in this study A left side B face
C dorsal side.

Himalayan Long-eared Bats, Plecotus homochrous, in China 135

Figure 3. Cranial morphology of Plecotus homochrous (GD-221656) A cranium in dorsal view B cranium
in ventral view € cranium in left side view D mandible in dorsal view E mandible left side view.

Amplitude (%)
50

0 pafesenamenstenamievaenntin

-50
-90 dB -50dB ss -10. dB
Frequency (kHz) ese Eee!
100
50
. 10 30 50
Time (ms)

Figure 4. Amplitude and spectrogram of echolocation calls of bats examined in this study.

136 Pengfei Luo et al. / ZooKeys 1161: 129-141 (2023)

+92.8 kHz; 52.2. + 1:9- kHz, 58:7 0.6 kHz, and 195 = 0:2) ms Mean. = SD);.te-
spectively. There is no significant difference in start frequency, end frequency, and fre-
quency of maximum energy between the P homochrous bats from Vietnam and the
four bats examined in this study (P values 0.16, 0.53, and 0.26) (Table 2). However,
there is a significant difference in pulse duration (P value 0.01). The four bats also have
a very low wing loading (5.68 + 0.29 N/m”) and a low wingspan ratio (6.82 = 0.70)
(Table 3), indicative of slow and flexible flights.

Table 2. Sound parameters of Plecotus homochrous echolocation calls.

Specimens Country Start frequency End frequency Frequency of maximum Duration (ms)
(kHz) (kHz) energy (kHz)
GD-221656 China 70.8 53.6 57.8 1.4
GD-221657 China 729 53.6 p91 1.4
GD-221658 China 73.8 52.6 2, 19
GD-221659 China 78.5 49.0 58.5 13
Mean + SD 74.0 + 2.8 2a? 58.7 + 0.6 Lax 02
IEBR-M-5469 Vietnam 69.6 51.6 59.3 1.1
IEBR-M-5483 Vietnam 71.8 53.9 62.6 1.1
HNHM202011 Vietnam pace D0 59.3 |
Mean + SD 70.9 + 0.9 53.4415 60.4 + 1.6 1.1+0.0
Kruskal—Wallis test ns ns ns P:=0:01

Table 3. Wing characteristics of Plecotus homochrous from China.

Specimens Wingspan ratio (N/m/’) Wingload
GD-221656 8.01 5.42
GD-221657 6.44 5.41
GD-221658 6.57 6.09
GD-221659 6.26 5.81
Mean + SD 6.82 + 0.70 5.68 + 0.29

Phylogenetic analysis

The phylogenetic tree reveals two major clades. The first clade contains P auritus,
P. homochrous, PR kozlovi, P- macrobullaris, P ognevi, and P sacrimontis (i.e. PR auri-
tus group). The second one includes P austriacus, P balensis, P kolombatovici, and
P. teneriffae (i.e. the P austriacus group). Bats GD-221656, GD-221657, and GD-
221659 are clustered with P homochrous from Vietnam (Fig. 5).

Discussion

In this study, we identified four bats captured from Guangxi, China as P homochrous
based on their morphological characteristics and phylogenetic relationship. In addi-
tion to these individuals of P homochrous, bats of six other Plecotus species have been

Himalayan Long-eared Bats, Plecotus homochrous, in China Lae

| OP425737 |
, OP425736 , Guangxi, China
. ~QP425735 — 3

100| 4; MNI60086 ~ | Plecotus homochrous
1 MN E00 88 Lao Cai, Vietnam
. — .MNI160089,
AF513759
I PERPITR404 Plecot it
98 ecotus auritus
AF513762 KF218405
AF513764
MT583360
65 90f. MT583389 | Plecotus kozlovi
Mba NC897569
se 99 MK410318 | Plecotus ognevi
75 100 ano 7 | Plecotus scrimontis
100 KR134358 |
KR134380 | Plecotus macrobullaris
100, SAPSI3 994
ee AF51377 6 “Al oa austriacus
99 100 F513783 | Plecotus kolombatovici
97 94 -AJ43 1644

AJ43 1647 | Plecotus teneriffae

100 eee ee | Plecotus balensis

1
NC016872 Corynorhinus rafinesquii
MF143489 Myotis melanorhinus

UFB
0.04

Figure 5. Phylogenetic tree of bats constructed based on results from the maximum-likelihood (ML)
analysis of Cyt 6 gene sequences. Numbers on ML tree nodes are ultrafast bootstrap (UFB) support values.

found in China, including P ariel, P kozlovi, P ognevi, P strelkovi, P taivanus (Yoshi-
yuki, 1991), and P wardi (Wilson and Mittermeier 2019; Wei 2022). Among these,
P. homochrous has the smallest skull and body size and thus are readily distinguishable
from the others (Fig. 6). Other major differences include fur color and thumb length.
Both ventral and dorsal fur of the four bats are bicolored (ventral fur dark to mixed grey
and yellowish; dorsal fur dark to brown), but the fur of other species varies in color pat-
tern as follows: P ariel: ventral, slightly pale; dorsal, grizzled dark brown; P kozlovi: ven-
tral, pale or whitish; P ognevi: ventral, bicolored (with pale brown base and white tips);
P strelkovi: dorsal, tricolored (black base, straw-colored middle shaft, and pale tips).
Thumb lengths, excluding claws, of the four bats are 3.28—4.46 mm, but those of other
bat species are longer (P kozlovi, 7.20—7.60 mm; P ognevi, 7.50-8.30 mm). The major
difference between the four P homochrous bats and P wardi is that they have a smaller
second upper incisor. Compared to P taivanus, the four bats have a longer forearm (FA)
and shorter head body (HB) and tail (T) length than P taivanus [(FA/(HB+T), 41.5%
vs 39.0%)]. In addition, the four bats have a keel, but P taivanus lacks such structure.
Although the four bats are morphologically and phylogenetically identical to
P. homochrous from Vietnam, the pulse duration of their echolocation calls is signifi-
cantly longer than in P homochrous from Vietnam; such differences may be due to the
complexity in recording echolocation calls, as bats tend to send more pulses to obtain
sufficient information when they fly in complex environments (Siemers et al. 2001;
Dietrich et al. 2006; Peng et al. 2019). The relatively high frequency of maximum
energy and low wing loading and wingspan ratio of the bats suggest that they forage

138

Pengfei Luo et al. / ZooKeys 1161: 129-141 (2023)

Table 4. List of bat species used in phylogenetic analyses.

Species Locality Cyt b

Corynorhinus rafinesquii United States NC016872
Myotis melanorhinus United States MF143489
Plecotus auritus Guadalajara, Spain AF513762
La Rioja, Spain AF513764

P auritus Valais, Switzerland AF513759
Navarra, Spain AF513765

Karklareli, Turkey KF218404

Rize, Turkey KF218405

P. austriacus Mainz, Germany AF513774
Granada, Spain AF513776

P balensis Abune Yusef, Ethiopia AF513798
Abune Yusef, Ethiopia AF513799

P. homochrous Guangxi, China OP425735
Guangxi, China OP425736

Guangxi, China OP425737
Lao Cai, Vietnam MN160086
Lao Cai, Vietnam MN160087

Lao Cai, Vietnam MN160088
Lao Cai, Vietnam MNI160089

P. kolombatovici Cyrenaica, Libya AF513782
Cyrenaica, Libya AF513783

P kozlovi Mongolian MT583360
Mongolian MT583363

Mongolian MT583369

P. macrobullaris Italy KR134358
Greece KR134380

Montenegro KR134385

P. ognevi Hovsgol National Park, Mongolia MK410318
Baikal, Russian MG897569

P. sacrimontis Oita, Japan LC036637
Hokkaido, Japan LC036639

P teneriffae La Palma, Spain AJ431644
El Hierro, Spain AJ431647

in relatively dense and complex environment using gleaning strategy and are montane
forest dweller.

Although many Plecotus species have been found in China, detailed information on
their geographical distribution is not available (Yu et al. 2021), and the identity of two of
these species (P ariel and P taivanus) remains uncertain because of the lack of molecular
evidence. There are also two Plecotus species found in Xizang and Gansu, China that have
yet to be named (Fig. 1; Spitzenberger et al. 2006). A well-defined list of species diversity
can provide important information for the designation of protected areas for ecological
conservation of various bat species. As such list is currently lacking, further efforts to
identify novel bat species and investigate their distribution ranges in China are warranted.

Himalayan Long-eared Bats, Plecotus homochrous, in China 139

2.5

~®- Plecotus ariel

~® P. kozlovi

-~® P. ognevi

-@ P.homochrous (China)
-~® P.homochrous (Vietnam)
-~® P. strelkovi

~& P.wardi

PC2 (12.3%)

-8 4 0 4
PCI (65.8%)

Figure 6. Plots of the first (PC1) versus the second (PC2) principal component for Plecotus ariel, P kozlovi,
P ognevi, P homochrous (examined in this study and those from Vietnam), P strelkovi, and P wardi.

Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the Special Foundation for National Science and Technology
Basic Research Program of China (2021FY100303) and Guangdong Provincial Sci-
ence and Technology Program (2021B1212110003, 2021B1212050021).

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Supplementary material |

Additional information

Authors: Pengfei Luo

Data type: tables (docx. file)

Explanation note: table S1: references of Plecotus species investigated; table $2: Factor
loading scores of characteristics used for the PCA of six bat species from China and
other regions.

Copyright notice: This dataset is made available under the Open Database License
(http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1.0/). The Open Database License
(ODDbL) is a license agreement intended to allow users to freely share, modify, and
use this Dataset while maintaining this same freedom for others, provided that the
original source and author(s) are credited.

Link: https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1161.99487.suppl1