Parahypsugo eisentrauti

Parahypsugo eisentrauti (Hill, 1968) Eisentraut’s Pipistrelle

Pipistrellus eisentrauti Hill, 1968: 45.

Pipistrellus (Hypsugo) eisentrauti: Hill and Harrison, 1987: 246, 274.

Hypsugo eisentrauti: Hoofer et al., 2006: 991.

ZFMK 1968.0005, holotype (Cameroon, Rumpi Hills); ZFMK 1968.0006, paratype (Cameroon, Mt. Kupe); ZFMK 1999.0676 (ZFMK-DNA- FC19442872 — Cameroon, Mt. Nlonako).

The history of the taxon eisentrauti is rather complicated. It was originally described in the genus Pipistrellus based on specimens from Cameroon (Rumpi Hills and Mt Kupe) (Hill, 1968). This was followed by the description of the taxon bellieri that was originally assigned to P. eisentrauti (see above). Both these taxa and P. crassulus were then moved to the genus Hypsugo and bellieri removed from P. eisentrauti to P. crassulus (Heller et al., 1994), although this was disputed by Koopman et al. (1995). In addition, new specimens of the taxon eisentrauti were reported from Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia and Uganda (Heller et al., 1994; Varty and Hill, 1988; Thorn and Kerbis Peterhans, 2009; see also Van Cakenberghe et al., 2017). However, specimens collected east of Cameroon probably represent one (or more) new species, which have not yet been studied in detail. Also a specimen (ROM 100532) used by Hoofer and Van Den Bussche (2003) to characterize P. eisentrauti in their tree represents a different species, most probably P. bellieri (Van Cakenberghe and Happold, 2013). Hoofer et al. (2006) listed the holotype (with misspelled type locality ‘Rumysi Hilus’ = Rumpi Hills) and the paratype of P. eisentrauti, but in their trees they used the wrong sequence that had been published previously (Hoofer and Van den Busche, 2003). The same (but wrong) sequence was recently used again by Amador et al. (2018). Our tree (Fig. 1) includes a new specimen of P. eisentrauti from Mt. Nlonako, a mountain neighboring Mt. Cameroon, the type locality for this species.