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MammalingSpecies accountsBats › Vespertilionidae

Least Yellow Bat

Rhogeessa mira
VU · Vulnerable Chiroptera Vespertilionidae
Size
3.5-4.5 cm + forearm 2.7-3 cm
Weight
3 to 4 g
Activity
Nocturnal
Sociability
Small groups

Description

It is, as its common name indicates, one of the smallest frogs of the entire American continent, barely larger than a nut when it is folded to rest in its daytime shelter. It lives in areas of dry tropical jungle and transitional forest of a Mexican Pacific strip, refuge in tree holes and rock cracks during the day. Like the rest of Rhogeessa species frogs, colloquially known as yellow frogs, it presents a warm-tone coat that gives it a common name to the entire group. Its reduced size, among the smaller of any American frog, makes it a good example of extreme miniaturization within the order of quiropters.

How to identify it

Minuscule frog, one of the smallest of all America, yellow brown coat characteristic of the genre, short and rounded ears. It is confused with other species of the Rhogeessa genus of the region, whose reliable separation often requires genetic or cranial analysis given the great external similarity and the diminished of all species of the group.

Habitat and range

Dry tropical rainforest and transitional forest, in lowlands. Distributed across a band of the Pacific coast of Mexico.

Diet

Insect-eating, hunting small flying insects flying over the dry tropical jungle vegetation where he lives.

Behaviour

It forms small groups in shelters of tree holes and rock cracks, with a poorly documented social behavior given the scarcity of studies on the species.

Conservation

Its populations are considered to be declining due to the continued loss of the dry tropical rainforest on which it depends, increasingly transformed by agricultural and livestock expansion in its distribution area.

Threats

Deforestation and fragmentation of dry rainforest by agricultural and livestock expansion on the Mexican Pacific coast.

Other accounts in Vespertilionidae

See all species accounts for bats · Full species index

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