Epomops buettikoferi (Matschie, 1899)

New material

ZFMK 2008.0276, ♂, 25 February 2008; 0017, ♀, W1, 4 December 2008.

We captured four individuals of this fruit bat over the creek in the forested ravine at W1; one over the rocky creek rapids at TO and three at the CMR site. During the 2002 RAP three captures were recorded at BK (Fahr and Ebigbo, 2004). During the 2003 RAP E. buettikoferi was recorded at Diécké and Mount Béro (Fahr et al., 2006). It was also recorded at Guinean Mount Nimba, at elevations between 500 and 1,000 m (Verschuren, 1976), where Denys et al. (2013) found it to be the second most abundant species. Wolton et al. (1982) captured it on the Liberian side of Mount Nimba and found no marked altitude preference. There is a record from Diari (Saala River) in the Fouta Djallon (Weber and Fahr, 2007 b) and another from the Parc National du Haute Niger (ZFMK 1997.0435), which was initially identified as E. franqueti (Ziegler et al., 2002). The northernmost locality in Guinea is Kankasili (10°11’N, 12°29’W). In Côte d’Ivoire, 57% of E. buettikoferi localities were in the rainforest, 28% in forest-savannah mosaic, and 15% in different types of savannah (Fahr, 1996). On Liberian Mount Nimba, the fruiting plants Solanum torvum and S. erianthum, colonizers of disturbed areas, were identified as the most important fruits visited (Wolton et al., 1982).

Conservation status

Least Concern. This species was downgraded from Vulnerable to Least Concern when it was found to have a broader distribution than previously thought, to exist in relatively large numbers in protected areas, and to tolerate habitat modification. Nevertheless, E. buettikoferi is considered to have a decreasing population trend (IUCN, 2015).