New bat species found in Himalayas, East Asian bat mislabel corrected

Guwahati: The latest edition of the scientific journal Zootaxa reports the discovery of a new bat species — the Himalayan long-tailed Myotis (Myotis himalaicus) — in the Himalayan region, and corrects a long-standing error in Indian scientific literature by confirming that the East Asian free-tailed bat (Tadarida insignis), not the European species, is found in India.
The tally of Indian bat species currently stands at 135 species, according to the journal published on Thursday.
The Himalayan long-tailed Myotis belongs to the Myotis frater complex — a group of morphologically similar bats found across a wide range, including eastern China, Taiwan, central and southeastern Siberia, Korea, Japan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, the journal said.
Scientists — Uttam Saikia from the Zoological Survey of India (Shillong), Rohit Chakravarty of the Nature Conservation Foundation (Mysuru), Gabor Csorba from the Hungarian Natural History Museum (Budapest), MA Laskar from St. Anthony's College (Shillong), and Manuel Ruedi of the Natural History Museum of Geneva — had collected the sample in May 2021, as part of a fresh reassessment of India's high-altitude bat diversity.
After analysing the DNA of the species and correlating it with other known species for four years, a statement issued by the scientists read, 'This new bat named Himalayan long-tailed Myotis (Myotis himalaicus) was described based on specimens collected from higher elevation areas of Uttarakhand and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan.'
Believed to be native to the southern slopes of the Himalayas, this species has so far been spotted in Deodar, Pine, and Cedar forests, where it appears to be relatively uncommon.
The journal added the East Asian free-tailed bat to the bat fauna of India. Based on detailed study of the specimen collected from Uttarakhand and genetic analysis, the researchers revealed that the globally Data Deficient East Asian free-tailed bat had been mistakenly identified as the European free-tailed bat (Tadarida teniotis).
This species is distributed in the Himalayan region of India, as well as China, Taiwan, Japan, and the Korean Peninsula.
The journal also sheds light on Babu's Pipistrelle (Pipistrellus babu), a species first discovered over a century ago in the Murree Hills of Pakistan and apparently common in the western and central Himalayas. Due to its morphological similarities with the Javan Pipistrelle (Pipistrellus javanicus), a species native to Southeast Asia, subsequent researchers had mistakenly considered it a synonym. However, the study confirms that Babu's Pipistrelle is a distinct species, with a distribution spanning Pakistan, the western Himalayas of India, and Nepal.
The study also provided the first specimen-based confirmation of the presence of a few other bat species — Savi's Pipistrelle (Hypsugo savii) and the Japanese greater horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus nippon) — in India, which had so far only been mentioned based on either doubtful specimens or zoogeographic grounds.
'The study is expected to have significant implications in documentation and conservation of small mammalian fauna of India and also give a boost to further studies in the Indian Himalayas. With this revisionary study, the confirmed tally of Indian bat species currently stands at 135 species which is likely to go up as studies continue,' Zoological Survey of India director Dhriti Banerjee said.

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

Time of India

3 hours ago

• Time of India

International conference at JNU discusses integration and promotion of Indian knowledge systems

New Delhi: A three-day international conference on Indian knowledge systems will be held at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) from July 10 to 12. Experts from different fields will present their views on the legacy and challenges of Indian knowledge systems. The conference will explore ways to integrate Indian knowledge systems into modern education, industry, govt, and civil society while fostering collaboration with Himalayan nations. "The conference is also being seen as a response to the dominance of European cultural paradigms in shaping scientific discourse worldwide. This mega academic gathering aims to project Indian knowledge systems as an alternative and complementary framework in global academia," said an official. It will provide an international platform for research presentations and discussions aimed at building a collective scientific community. The event will also aim to establish a global network to promote Indian knowledge systems within the global academic and research communities. The official added, "Through this platform, efforts will be made to connect Indian knowledge traditions with contemporary global scientific paradigms and challenges". The conference will highlight fields such as engineering sciences and natural sciences, demonstrating how Indian knowledge systems provide unique insights into humanity, nature, and the pursuit of knowledge.

Business Standard

7 hours ago

• Business Standard

China builds laser weapon that works in Arctic cold and desert heat

Chinese scientists have developed a high-powered laser system that can function reliably across some of the Earth's harshest temperature conditions—ranging from -50 degrees Celsius in Arctic regions to 50 degrees Celsius in desert environments such as the Sahara—without the need for heating or cooling systems. According to a report by South China Morning Post, the 2-kilowatt fibre laser was designed by a team led by Chen Jinbao, vice-president of the National University of Defence Technology (NUDT), a prominent figure in high-energy laser research. The laser's compact and portable design marks a sharp departure from existing systems with similar power outputs, such as the European HELMA-P or India's IDDIS, which rely on bulky container-sized cooling infrastructure and truck-mounted platforms. Breakthrough in temperature-resilient laser tech 'Our team has achieved a technological breakthrough in the performance of wide-temperature operating fibre lasers,' Chen and his colleagues wrote in a peer-reviewed paper to be published in July in the Chinese-language journal Higher Power Laser and Particle Beams. The system's resilience stems from several design innovations. These include the use of 940-nanometre pump lasers that exhibit minimal thermal drift and the configuration of nine forward and 18 backward fibre-coupled diode lasers for light injection. Crucially, pump combiners were placed outside the resonator chamber to protect heat-sensitive components, and ytterbium-doped fibre was coiled at 8cm diameters to suppress unwanted parasitic lightwaves. At the heart of the laser lies a dual-clad optical resonator, with highly reflective gratings at both ends enclosing ytterbium-doped fibres. When pumped, ytterbium ions emit photons that are amplified into a powerful 1,080nm beam, filtered and collimated through quartz end-caps. Lab tests confirm consistent high performance In simulations mimicking rapid shifts between freezing and scorching environments, the laser consistently delivered over 2kW in output, peaking at 2.47kW at 20 degrees Celsius. It achieved a power efficiency of 71 per cent with near-perfect beam quality. Ytterbium, a rare earth element largely sourced from China, played a pivotal role in this achievement. Its quantum properties enable efficient energy conversion while resisting performance degradation at high temperatures—a phenomenon known as thermal quenching. Compact system suited for rapid deployment Chen's team stressed the need for wide-temperature capability as laser systems find expanding applications beyond controlled indoor settings. 'To ensure stable output, all standard fibre lasers require integrated cooling systems to maintain temperature control for internal components and optical paths, resulting in a narrow operating temperature range typically centred around room temperature,' the researchers noted. By contrast, the NUDT prototype approaches suitcase-scale portability, a stark contrast to shipping container-sized alternatives in use globally. This makes it particularly suitable for quick deployment in remote, mobile, or conflict-prone environments where temperature extremes are common. Applications across defence and industry 'Fibre lasers offer high efficiency, low cost and compact size, enabling widespread deployment across industrial processing, optoelectronic countermeasures, precision cutting and other fields,' the researchers wrote. They added that future work will focus on pushing the output power higher and broadening the laser's effective operating temperature range. The development signals a significant advance in China's laser weapon capabilities, with implications for both defence and industrial technologies.

Indian Express

7 hours ago

• Indian Express

How face of a woman who lived 10,500 years ago, now reconstructed, challenges ‘genetic uniformity' among European hunter-gatherers

With DNA extracted from the body's remains, researchers have reconstructed the face of a woman who lived approximately 10,500 years ago in present-day Belgium. The findings of this analysis challenge earlier assumptions about genetic uniformity among European Mesolithic populations. The team, led by scientists from Ghent University, used advanced genetic and archaeological methods to bring the prehistoric figure to life—revealing a woman with blue eyes, slightly lighter skin, and distinct facial features. Archaeologist Philippe Crombé told CNN 'good quaity' DNA was taken from the woman's skull. The woman's facial reconstruction, including skin tone, hair, and eye colour, was derived from ancient DNA analysis, while other elements like her jewelry and tattoos were informed by broader archaeological evidence. The findings challenge previous assumptions that European hunter gatherers shared the same genetic makeup, according to Project Lead Isabelle De Groote. It also shows that there was already considerable variation in skin color among different populations. 'She had lighter skin than many other Mesolithic people studied so far,' Groote said. 'From the skull, we could also tell she was between 35 and 60 years old…. She had a high nasal bridge and strong brow ridges,' she added, highlighting that the features were similar to the Cheddar Man in the UK. Crombé noted that while most Mesolithic DNA samples belong to a similar genetic group, 'it is to be expected that in the wide area of Western Europe there's some variability, as there is today.' The woman's remains were discovered in the Margaux cave in Dinant during an excavation in the late 1980s, alongside the bodies of eight other women. Many of the bodies were sprinkled with ochre—an indicator of symbolic or ritual behavior—and covered with stone fragments. One skeleton bore post-mortem cut marks. De Groote noted that the 'cave was used over several hundred of years so that they were places of memory that people would go back to despite their mobile hunter-gatherer lifestyle.' 'They were still moving around because they were entirely dependent on natural resources,' Crombé explained. 'That forced them to move their settlements regularly.' The team is now working to analyse relationships among the buried individuals and studying dietary habits, including how much fish they consumed. (With inputs from CNN)