University of Kansas Publications
Museum of Natural History

Volume 14, No. 5, pp. 73-98, 4 figs.
December 29, 1961

North American Yellow Bats, "Dasypterus,"
And a List of the Named Kinds
Of the Genus Lasiurus Gray

By

E. RAYMOND HALL AND J. KNOX JONES, JR.

University of Kansas
Lawrence
1961

University of Kansas Publications, Museum of Natural History

Editors: E. Raymond Hall, Chairman, Henry S. Fitch,
Theodore H. Eaton, Jr.

Volume 14, No. 5, pp. 73-98, 4 figs.
Published December 29, 1961

University of KansasLawrence, Kansas

PRINTED BY
JEAN M. NEIBARGER, STATE PRINTER
TOPEKA, KANSAS
1961

North American Yellow Bats, "Dasypterus,"
And a List of the Named Kinds
Of the Genus Lasiurus Gray

BY

E. RAYMOND HALL AND J. KNOX JONES, JR.

INTRODUCTION

Yellow bats occur only in the New World and by most recent authors have been referred to the genusDasypterusPeters. The red bats and the hoary bat, all belonging to the genusLasiurusGray, also occur only in the New World except that the hoary bat has an endemic subspecies in the Hawaiian Islands.

The kind of yellow bat first to be given a distinctive name was the smaller of the two species that occur in North America. It was namedNycticejus egain 1856 (p. 73) by Gervais on the basis of material from the state of Amazonas, Brazil, South America, but was early recognized as occurring also in North America (in the sense that México and Central America, including Panamá, are parts of North America). More than 40 years elapsed before subspecific names were proposed for the North American populations; Thomas namedDasypterus ega xanthinusin 1897 (p. 544) from Baja California, andDasypterus ega panamensisin 1901 (p. 246) from Panamá.

The larger of the two North American species was namedLasiurus intermediusin 1862 (p. 246) by H. Allen on the basis of material from extreme northeastern México. Another alleged species,Dasypterus floridanus, was named in 1902 (p. 392) by Miller from Florida, but as set forth below it is only a subspecies ofL. intermedius, a species that is seemingly limited to parts of the North American mainland and Cuba.

A third species,Atalapha egregia, allegedly allied to the small yellow bat,L. ega, was named in 1871 (p. 912) by Peters from Santa Catarina, Brazil, but Handley (1960:473) thinks thatL. egregiusis allied instead to the red bats. The speciesL. egregiushas not been studied in connection with the observations reported below.

Bats of the genus concerned were given the generic nameNycterisby Borkhausen in 1797 (p. 66), and the nameLasiurusby Gray in 1831 (p. 38). For much of the latter part of the 19th century the generic nameAtalaphaproposed by Rafinesque in 1814 (p. 12) was used because it antedated the nameLasiurus. In this period Harrison Allen (1894:137) raised to generic rank the nameDasypterusthat had been proposed by Peters in 1871 (p. 912) only as a subgenus for the yellow bats. Since 1894 the yellow bats ordinarily have borne the generic nameDasypterus. The red bats and the hoary bat continued to be referred to as of the genusAtalapha<