ИСТИНА

The increasing volume of focused ecological and taxonomic surveys of Chiroptera in Vietnam has contributed to the enrichment of the bat species list for this country by over 20% during the past decade, with the present tally estimated at over 110 species. This was a result of both new zoogeographic records and descriptions of new species. Furthermore, recent genetic studies have shown cryptic divergence within currently recognized morphological species, suggesting that the taxonomic diversity of Vietnamese bats may be substantially underestimated. The genus Myotis, notorious for its taxonomic complexity, remains one of the prominent taxonomic “hot spots” both within Vietnam and beyond. Our studies involving combined morphological and molecular (DNA barcoding) approaches propose several avenues for further taxonomic enquiry. M. siligorensis species group shows genetic phylogeographic and ecological structuring, with one geographically restricted population recently described as a separate species (M. phanluongi), based on a combination of morphological, genetic and ecological characters. Closely related M. annamiticus and M. laniger, while being morphologically discrete, have nearly identical COI sequences, suggesting recent mitochondrial introgression. Finally, two common and broadly distributed species, M. horsfieldii and M. muricola s. lato, showed deep genetic splits putatively connected with differences in morphology and geographic ranges and thus cryptic taxonomic diversity. Further complexity is added by the fact that Indochinese specimens of the latter demonstrate some morphological differences from those known from type locality in Napal, indicating that “true” M. muricola may be absent from Vietnam. We would like to express thanks for their help to Vladimir Lebedev (ZMMU), Natalia Ivanova, Paul Hebert (Biodiversity Institute of Ontario), Judith Eger (Royal Ontario Museum), Andrei Kuznetzov and Nguen Dang Hoi (Vietnamese-Russian Tropical Centre). The work was done with the partial support of RFBR grant №10-04-00683-а. Molecular analyses were performed at the Canadian Centre of DNA Barcoding.