Animalia > Chordata > Mammalia > Chiroptera > Phyllostomidae > Lonchophylla > Lonchophylla robusta

Lonchophylla robusta (orange nectar bat)

Synonyms: Choeroniscus mexicana ponsi; Choeroniscus periosus ponsi

Wikipedia Abstract

The orange nectar bat (Lonchophylla robusta) is a species of bat in the family Phyllostomidae. It is found in Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela. Feeding Mechanism Orange nectar bats in Costa Rica were observed utilising a unique feeding mechanism that has not been seen in any other animal, this mechanism allows it to pull liquid against gravity using a pumping mechanism. The orange nectar bat's tongue contains two grooves filled with tiny muscles that force the nectar up into the bats mouth. Two forces are at work here, capillary action and muscle force. The orange nectar bat likely developed this method independently of other species due to their unique mouth physiology.
View Wikipedia Record: Lonchophylla robusta

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
3
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
21
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 7.13
EDGE Score: 2.1

Attributes

Adult Weight [1]  13 grams
Diet [2]  Carnivore (Invertebrates), Frugivore, Nectarivore
Diet - Fruit [2]  30 %
Diet - Invertibrates [2]  40 %
Diet - Nectar [2]  30 %
Forages - Arboreal [2]  100 %
Litter Size [3]  1
Nocturnal [2]  Yes
Snout to Vent Length [3]  3.15 inches (8 cm)

Ecoregions

Protected Areas

Biodiversity Hotspots

Name Location Endemic Species Website
Mesoamerica Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama No
Tropical Andes Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela No
Tumbes-Choco-Magdalena Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Peru No

Range Map

External References

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
1Felisa A. Smith, S. Kathleen Lyons, S. K. Morgan Ernest, Kate E. Jones, Dawn M. Kaufman, Tamar Dayan, Pablo A. Marquet, James H. Brown, and John P. Haskell. 2003. Body mass of late Quaternary mammals. Ecology 84:3403
2Hamish Wilman, Jonathan Belmaker, Jennifer Simpson, Carolina de la Rosa, Marcelo M. Rivadeneira, and Walter Jetz. 2014. EltonTraits 1.0: Species-level foraging attributes of the world's birds and mammals. Ecology 95:2027
3Nathan P. Myhrvold, Elita Baldridge, Benjamin Chan, Dhileep Sivam, Daniel L. Freeman, and S. K. Morgan Ernest. 2015. An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles. Ecology 96:3109
Ecoregions provided by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). WildFinder: Online database of species distributions, ver. 01.06 Wildfinder Database
Biodiversity Hotspots provided by Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0