Scientists at Chicago's Field Museum and New York's American Museum of Natural History have discovered three new species of yellow-shouldered bats, genus Sturnira, in the Neotropics. On Wednesday open-access journal ZooKeys published their paper on two of the new species, Sturnira bakeri and Sturnira burtonlimi. The two new species were previously confused with S. ludovici, and S. lilium and S. luisi, respectively. With the discovery, genus Sturnira now has the most species of any genus in family Phyllostomidae, the leaf-nosed bats.
Species S. bakeri was named after Dr. Robert J. Baker, who "has made enormous contributions to our [Authors of the ZooKey paper] understanding of bats, particularly to the evolution of Neotropical phyllostomids"; and S. burtonlimi after Dr. Burton K. Lim, who "collected the type series of this species and has made many other important collections throughout the Neotropics and beyond", the authors noted in the paper.
Within the New World tropics, the distribution range of the genus, the new species' known living areas are in Costa Rica and Panama for S. burtonlimi, and Western Ecuador for S. bakeri. The researchers identified differences between different specimens, including those in their teeth, skull shapes, and DNA sequences.
Wikinews interviewed one of the chiropterologists, Paúl M. Velazco of the American Museum of Natural History, about the study.
((Wikinews))  The Sturnira genus now has 22 species, over 1.5 times larger than it was a year ago (14 species). Who contributed to this change? Did you participate throughout the entire process, or only the discovery of the last 2 species?
((WN))  The genus is called Sturnira Gray in the paper. I've not seen extra adjectives in genus names, before. What is the context for such name?
((WN))  What caused your initial interest in the question in the genus? When did you become interested?
((WN))  The paper mentions that the genus is now the most speciose genus in the Neotropical family Phyllostomidae. What genus did it beat? How many species does it include?
((WN))  What equipment did you use?
((WN))  Did you conduct field study to identify the species' habits? If so, where and how did you do that?
((WN))  How do you isolate of the living area of the new species from the living area of the old species?
((WN))  How long did the study take? What has been the most time-consuming activity?
((WN))  Who participated in the study? What were their roles?
((WN))  Who do you collaborate with internationally about your study?
((WN))  What future research do you plan?

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Wikinews interviews Paúl M. Velazco about new yellow-shouldered bat species