CHROMOSOMES AND RELATIONSHIPS OF LONG-EARED BATS OF THE GENERA PLECOTUS AND OTONYCTERIS

Banded chromosomes were studied from the monotypic genus Otonycteris a nd compared to the Saharo-Arabian representative of the genus Plecotus (P. austriacus christii). These data, which indicate Otonycteris is a plecotine bat, were used to construct a phylogenetic tree for the fiv e genera of tong-eared vespertilionid bats. Two groups of long-eared b ats were recognized according to shared-derived fusions since divergin g from the primitive Myotis-Eptesicus lineage; Idionycteris and Euderm a share four derived centric fusions, and Otonycteris, Barbastella, an d Plecotus share five derived centric fusions. Otonycteris was derived from the Plecotus-Barbastella lineage by two rearrangements that redu ced the chromosome number to 28.