Discovering six new bat species is a treat for museum researchers

(Press-News.org) Just in time for Halloween, six new bat species have been discovered by researchers from the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), Field Museum in Chicago, and Lawrence University in Wisconsin. This nocturnal – and slightly spooky – group of mammals is incredibly diverse, and the discovery adds to the thousands of known bat species.

Formally described as new species through the examination of physical and genetic characteristics, these six new species from the Philippines are commonly known as tube-nosed bats.

“This latest research serves to illustrate how much remains unknown about the countless species with which we coexist,” says Dr. Judith Eger, Curator Emeritus of Mammals at ROM. “Expanding our knowledge of biodiversity is essential to understanding and managing our environment on behalf of humanity and the other species on which the vitality of our planet depends.”

In the Philippines, Halloween is celebrated less than in North America, but Filipinos have their own bat-related folklore of aswang – frightening and shape-shifting monsters, some inspired by flying fox bats, the largest bats in the world. And the diversity of bats is echoed in their cultural significance around the world – for instance, they are thought to bring good luck in China; fortune and wealth in India; and worshipped as deities in Guatemala and Mexico.

“I’m astonished at how much we still don’t know about the natural world, such as how many bat species there are. Before we started our research, there were only two species of tube-nosed bats reported from the Philippines,” says Dr. Burton Lim, Assistant Curator of Mammals at ROM. “We confirmed the presence of one of those species, plus another closely related species previously unknown to science. The other previously reported species was actually not present in the Philippines, but we did find five new species that were masquerading as it!”

The six new bat species – Murina alvarezi, Murina baletei, Murina hilonghilong, Murina luzonensis, Murina mindorensis, and Murina philippinensis – were identified as separate species through a combination of morphological examination and genetic testing. Researchers examined tooth pattern, skull shape, fur banding and other visible characteristics, and conducted genetic analyses in the ROM Laboratory of Molecular Systematics.

Bats are found worldwide as they evolved to occupy a wide range of ecosystems, and they perform important ecological functions that support biodiversity. Tube-nosed bats (genus Murina) are insect-eating bats found throughout Asia that depend on forested areas for roosting and are therefore at risk from deforestation. The Philippines, as a country of many large and small islands, is home to remarkably diverse habitats and was known to have 79 species of bats – even before this current discovery.

How bat species of the genus Murina in the Philippines differ from those from other regions in Southeast Asia has been a ROM research focus for many years. The ROM bat collection is among the most extensive in the world and includes dried skins with skeletons and ethanol-preserved specimens. In addition, the collection contains 15,000 frozen tissue specimens from 30 countries, representing 15 of the world’s 21 bat families, 120 of 220 genera, and 400 of 1,400 species.

This current research, now published in the international journal of animal taxonomy Zootaxa, adds six more new species of bats known to science, and their corresponding nucleotide sequences have been deposited in GenBank. With many diverse forest environments in the Philippines, more new bat species are likely to be discovered in the future.

"It has been a long and slow process of discovery, but these six previously unknown species show clearly just how wonderfully extensive Philippine biodiversity is,” says Dr. Lawrence Heaney, Curator Emeritus of Mammals at the Field Museum. “On a per-unit-area basis, the Philippines has the most distinctive mammal fauna of any country worldwide.”

These new species are all small bats, weighing just 4 to 14 grams each. The specimens were collected by the Field Museum starting in 1988, including from protected Key Biodiversity Areas, in collaboration with the Biodiversity Management Bureau of the Philippine Department of Environment and Natural Resources and Protected Area Management Boards.

“These bats are notoriously elusive, so the tube-nosed bat collection this study examined was cobbled together over many years, expeditions, and memorable experiences – one bat at a time. As a result, it’s deeply satisfying to see our collection make such an important contribution to Philippine biodiversity studies,” says Dr. Jodi Sedlock, co-author and Dennis and Charlot Nelson Singleton Professor of Biological Sciences at Lawrence University. “I’m eager to learn what these newly described tube-nosed bats each do with their tube-like nostrils that, presumably, offer them directional smell detection. Describing them is an essential beginning, but there’s still so much to learn!”

The Field Museum has conducted fieldwork, along with colleagues in the Philippines, for over 30 years as part of the Philippine Mammal ​Project. The reference specimens (holotype) and other specimens originally housed at the Field Museum for study are now at the National Museum of the Philippines.

One of the new species is named in honour of James Alvarez, a devoted young bat biologist and student with the University of the Philippines - Los Banos, who tragically died during fieldwork in 2018. Another is named for prominent Filipino biodiversity scientist Danilo (Danny) Balete, who had been involved since 1989 with the Field Museum’s Philippine Mammal Project.

The paper, Systematics and biogeography of tube-nosed bats, Murina (Mammalia, Chiroptera, Vespertilionidae), from the Philippines with descriptions of six new species, was published in Zootaxa, September 8, 2025. DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5691.1.1

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