Thomas’s Pipistrelle
Pipistrellus cadornae Thomas, 1916: 416; Pashok, 3,500’, Darjeeling, north-east India
Previous records from Myanmar
Kachin State: Htingnan; Tasa Hku and Ningma (Hill, 1962). There are no new records.
Descriptive characters
The hairs on the back are chestnut brown with slightly darker roots. On the underside, the tips are pale chestnut brown and the roots dark brown. Forearm length
is 33.0– 36.6 mm (Table 4, external meas- urements based on specimens from Viet- nam in Bates et al., 1997; FA = 34.2–37.0 mm in Hendrichsen et al., 2001). The fifth metacarpal is about equal in length to the third and fourth. The penis is not greatly enlarged. The baculum, based on an ex- tralimital specimen from Vietnam is small, 2.5 mm in length, but robust. The shaft is curved downwards and is deeply grooved ventrally (Fig. 1F). There are two pro- nounced projections on each side of the base. The distal end is distinctively spoon- shaped. In the skull, the braincase is nar- row and rounded. The basioccipital area has a well defined central ridge running between the two cochleae but the basiocci- pital pits are virtually absent. The zygoma- ta are robust with a dorsal projection on each jugal bone. The second incisor (I3) at- tains the height of the secondary cusp of the first (I2) and is about equal in crown area. The first upper premolar (P2) is very small, about half or less the crown area of I2; it is situated in the recess formed by the upper canine (C1) and the second upper premolar (P4). The P2 of specimen BMNH.50.467 is minute, less than one quarter the crown area of I2. The first lower premolar (P2) is about two-thirds the crown area of the second (P4).
Similar species
Pipistrellus cadornae is distinguished from P. pulveratus and P. javanicus by its smaller first upper premolar (P2). The shape of the baculum is diagnostic.
Ecology
Pipistrellus cadornae was collected at 708 m a.s.l. at Tasa Hku, where it was ‘caught in a banana tree in a jungle’. It was also found at 920 m at Htinghnan in dry bamboo in ‘medium forest’ (information from the labels of specimens in The Natural History Museum, London).