Anthony’s Pipistrelle
Pipistrellus anthonyi Tate, 1942: 252; Changyinku, N. Burma, 7,000’
Previous records from Myanmar
Kachin State: Changyinku (type locality of anthonyi). There are no new records.
Descriptive characters
No specimen of P. anthonyi was seen by the authors of this paper. The description re- lies primarily on Tate (1942). With a fore- arm length of 38 mm, P. anthonyi is struc- turally similar to P. joffrei but very dark
brown instead of pale brown. The pelage is glossy and velvety. The thumb is short, the basal phalanx is 3.4 mm in length and pro- vided with a small basal pad. Tate (1942) did not specify whether the fifth digit of anthonyi is reduced in length, as it is in P. joffrei. The only known skull of anthonyi has an incomplete braincase. According to Tate (1942), the skull has ‘an exceptionally wide lachrymal region and even wider spaces across well developed supraorbital tuber- cles, but narrower muzzle and canine width’. Each zygoma has a small descending process, 0.5 mm in depth, external to the third upper molar (M3). The canine has a strongly defined posterior cusp; the first up- per premolar (P2) is minute, about one quar- ter of the crown area of the first upper inci- sor (I2). Both the first (P2) and second (P4) premolars are rather small and compressed in the toothrow; P4 is slightly taller than P2. Nothing is known of the baculum of this species. According to Hill (1966), in P. jof-frei, the baculum is thought to be either small or absent.
Similar species
As noted above, P. anthonyi is apparently structurally similar to P. joffrei but with a darker pelage. However, a specimen (BMNH.16.3.26.2) in the Natural History Museum, London referred to P. joffrei is in- termediate in colour, being a dark reddish- brown. This possibly suggests that anthonyi may prove to be conspecific with joffrei, with P. joffrei being the prior name.
Ecology
This data deficient species, which is endemic to Myanmar, was collected in March, 1939 from Changyinku, which is a small village situated in a broad, open valley at an altitude of 2,150 m a.s.l. The valley is drained by the headwaters of the Chipwi River. Even by 1939 it had been extensively cleared of its natural deciduous forest for cultivation and grazing. Open, dry and boggy
meadows, bracken, tree rhododendron (Rhododendron delavayi), and some pine forest occurred in the region (Anthony, 1941).