Fig. 13 A–B
Rhinolophus gigas Wagner, 1845: 148.
* Hipposideros commersoni gigas (Wagner, 1845).
For a long time “ Hipposideros commersoni ” was considered to occur across the African continent, but McWilliam (1982: 9) found gigas to be specifically different from commersoni, which ultimately led to the restriction of the usage of the name “ Hipposideros commersoni ” for populations from Madagascar only. Happold (2013k: 385) indicates that both gigas and vittatus (or its synonym marungensis) were reported to occur sympatrically, which makes them separate species as well (see also Simmons 2005: 372, 377). Unfortunately, however, as mentioned by these two authors, this split probably makes it necessary to re-examine all material collected prior to 2005 to assess their identification.
Although Hayman et al. (1966: 44) report the two “subspecies”, they only provided a map for H. commersoni gigas (map 50), which also contained the data for the other form. The distribution map provided by Happold (2013k: 386) indicates that “ H. gigas ” primarily occurs in western Africa to the Republic of the Congo, coastal Angola and in the coastal areas around the border between Kenya and Tanzania. Furthermore, she plots a few isolated records in the eastern part of the DRC. The SDM map is fairly similar, although we connect the western African populations with those from the DRC and believe the eastern African populations represent Macronycteris vittatus rather than M. gigas.