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Bangladesh is a South Asian country located at the crossroads of the
Indochina and Indo-Himalayan subregions, making it a country of rich
faunal diversity. Bangladesh's high population density paired with
rapid habitat alteration leaving only 6% of its natural habitats threatens
its faunal diversity. Over 1,455 bat species live on earth, providing
immense ecological services to maintain biodiversity. The paucity of bat
research in Bangladesh and the lack of comprehensive work has led us to
set the goal of checking how many species are present in Bangladesh, and
the possibility of bat species yet to have occurred. Here we compiled
species occurrence data on the bats of Bangladesh and states in
neighboring countries (India – states are West Bengal, Sikkim, Meghalaya,
Assam, Tripura, Mizoram; Myanmar – states are Chin, Rakhine) from the
museums (American Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian National Museum
of Natural History, Natural History Museum at United Kingdom, Field Museum
of Natural History, Hungarian Natural History Museum, and Royal Ontario
Museum), Global Biodiversity Information Facility, and literature, and
constructed distribution maps for each species. The maps depicted both the
fine-scale and coarse-scale distribution of the species. We confirmed 31
species are occurring in Bangladesh – among them, 22 species are confirmed
with the voucher specimen, 15 species are associated with the preserved
tissues, and one is confirmed with the morphometric data and key
characteristics. Based on the species occurrence in the states of India
and Myanmar, along with the habitat preference, an additional 83 species
are yet to have occurred in Bangladesh. Among them, 38 species are
categorized as Highly Probable, 33 species are Probable, and 10 species
are Possible. We recommend bat surveys are urgent in Bangladesh using all
complementary capture techniques that will contribute to voucher specimen
collections and confirm the presence of bats. In addition, echolocation
calls of bats can help establish call libraries.
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