Short update re bats on the GoG islands, including a few reference from the last years:

There’s a very nice booklet by Ana Rainho and others, summarizing the results of a bat recent survey on São Tomé:
Rainho, A., Meyer, C. F. J., Thorsteinsdóttir, S., Sidney Samba, J. J. & Palmeirim, J. M., 2010. Distribuição, estatuto e conservação dos morcegos de São Tomé. Centro de Biologia Ambiental & Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa. 48 pp.

Eidolon helvum:
- Alison Peel from the Univ. of Cambridge studied phylogeography and population genetics of Eidolon on both the continent and the GoG islands, hope her paper will appear soon.
- estimating population sizes of these bats is quite a challenge, these colleagues had a try in Príncipe:
Dallimer, M., King, T., Cope, D. & Jiana, M. B., 2006. Estimation of population density of Eidolon helvum on the island of Príncipe, Gulf of Guinea. Mammalia 70(1/2): 48-51.

Hipposideros ruber:
- samples from both São Tomé and Príncipe were included in a molecular phylogeny of the messy H. caffer-ruber group, which has given bat taxonomists a headache for decades. It turns out that within this species group there’s a lot of cryptic diversity, and samples from STP group with populations from Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea:
Vallo, P., Guillén-Servent, A., Benda, P., Pires, D. B. & Koubek, P., 2009. Variation of mitochondrial DNA in the Hipposideros caffer complex (Chiroptera: Hipposideridae) and its taxonomic implications. Acta Chiropterologica 10(2): 193-206.
- there’s a nice paper on diurnal activity of these bats on São Tomé. It’s another case where bats on islands with an impoverished raptor guild have become partly diurnal (the classic example is the Azorean noctule bat, Nyctalus azoreum).
Russo, D., Maglio, G., Rainho, A., Meyer, C. F. J. & Palmeirim, J. M., 2011. Out of the dark: Diurnal activity in the bat Hipposideros ruber on São Tomé island (West Africa). Mammalian Biol. 76(6): 701-708.

Miniopterus minor:
Finally, Javier Juste and colleagues showed that the long-fingered bats of São Tomé are distinct from mainland as well as Indian Ocean populations:
Juste B., J., Ferrández, A., Fa, J. E., Masefield, W. & Ibáñez, C., 2007. Taxonomy of little bent-winged bats (Miniopterus, Miniopteridae) from the African islands of São Tomé, Grand Comoro and Madagascar, based on mtDNA. Acta Chiropterologica 9(1): 27-37.

Happy holidays, and an exciting 2012 with loads of discoveries from these wonderful islands,

Jakob