Guide for Acoustic Identification of Florida bats

Family

Mormoopidae

Database species code

Morbla or Moba

See glossary for explanation of codes

Scientific name

Mormoops blainvillei Leach, 1821

Taxonomy follows Simmons and Cirranello (2021)

Call shape

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Narrow band, FM decreasing frequency. Never paired or having a reverse J shape

Vocal signature parameters
Parameters   N Min Max Mean St.Dev 10% 25% 75% 90%
Dur 313 1.51 3.94 2.36 0.56 1.70 1.94 2.71 3.17
TBC 238 33.2 4730.9 456.9 785.0 60.0 122.2 333.9 993.3
Fmin 313 52.29 62.99 56.03 1.77 54.05 54.61 57.35 58.39
Fmax 313 56.74 67.23 65.01 1.47 63.75 64.78 65.84 66.39
BW 313 1.38 14.10 8.99 2.30 5.82 7.49 10.62 11.77
Fmean 313 55.67 63.66 60.86 1.16 59.73 60.36 61.54 62.02
Fk 313 56.74 66.95 64.84 1.50 63.49 64.52 65.57 66.12
FcH1 313 27.59 32.00 30.67 0.80 29.74 30.31 31.25 31.50
Fc 313 55.17 64.00 61.35 1.59 59.48 60.61 62.50 62.99
FcH3 313 82.76 96.00 92.02 2.39 89.22 90.92 93.75 94.49
Sc 313 15.56 125.66 63.51 20.30 39.69 48.11 75.67 91.08
Pmc 313 1.60 14.50 6.00 1.95 3.70 4.50 7.30 8.50
Source of acoustic data

Bruce Miller recorded in Cuba

Reference calls recorded by Miller are being archived at BioAcoustica and will be freely available. See Baker et al., (2015).

Known counties of distribution

Accidental and restricted to the southern Keys

 

  • Monroe
    • Conservation status

    Accidental: Not evaluated for Florida

    Least concern; Ver.3.1 ; Population trend - unknown; evaluated 2008. (I.U.C.N. 2017.)

    Notes

    To date there is a single record based on a photograph of a roosting bat in the Keys. The species is considered accidental for Florida. Verified calls were recorded in Cuba by Miller in 2006 and are distinct and will not confused with any other species known to occur in Florida.

     

    Calls of Peter's Ghost-faced Bat (M. megalophylla) are similar in shape. However, the Fc is ~10 kHz lower in frequency with a mean 50.3 kHz.   The range of M. megalophylla includes Mesoamerica, South America and Caribbean Islands (excluding Puerto Rico and Cuba) is restricted to the S. W. U.S. 

     

    Note neither Kaleidoscope and Sonobat auto ID algorithms include this species for Florida.

     

    See Baker et. al., (2015) for discussion of BioAcoustica and Baker and Vincent (2019) for a critique of the lack of freely available acoustic data.

    Citations

    Baker, E., B. W. Price, S. D. Rycroft, J. Hill, and V. S. Smith. 2015. BioAcoustica: a free and open repository and analysis platform for bioacoustics. Database. 2015. bav054

     

    Baker, E., and S. Vincent. 2019. A deafening silence: a lack of data and reproducibility in published bioacoustics research? Biodiversity Data Journal 7: e36783.

     

    Lancaster, W. C., and E. K. V. Kalko. 1996. Mormoops blainvillei Mammalian Species. 544,1-5.

     

    Macías, S., E. C. Mora, and A. García. 2006. Acoustic Identification of Mormoopid Bats: A Survey During the Evening Exodus. Journal of Mammalogy. 87: 324-330.

     

    Simmons, N. B., and A. L. Cirranello. 2020. Bat Species of the World: A taxonomic and geographic database. http://batnames.org

     

    The IUCN 2017. Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2017-1.www.iucnredlist.org;. Downloaded on August 6, 2017.

    Guide for Acoustic Identification of Florida bats 2021, all rights reserved.