Miniopterus, a widespread genus of bats in Africa, southern Eurasia, and Australia, was first recorded from Madagascar by
George Edward Dobson, who mentioned the larger
Miniopterus schreibersii and the smaller
M. scotinus (currently
M. natalensis) in his 1878 catalog of the bats in the
British Museum. In 1906,
Oldfield Thomas named the larger species
M. majori and the smaller
M. manavi. He regarded
M. manavi as close to the mainland African
M. minor, In their 1995
Faune de Madagascar review of Malagasy bats, however, Randolph Peterson and colleagues again separated
M. manavi as a species, with
M. manavi griveaudi (currently
Miniopterus griveaudi) from
Grande Comore as a subspecies. Peterson, who died before the review was completed, had originally divided
M. manavi into several species occurring in different areas, but his collaborators decided conservatively to keep
M. manavi as a single species, recommending reassessment of the status of those forms as new material would become available. In the 2000s,
molecular studies helped clarify the systematics of
Miniopterus. In 2007, Javier Juste and colleagues, using sequences of the
mitochondrial cytochrome b gene, found that bats from Madagascar (
M. manavi), Grande Comore (
M. manavi griveaudi) and
São Tomé (
M. minor newtoni; currently
Miniopterus newtoni) did not cluster together to the exclusion of other African
Miniopterus; however, their samples of "
M. manavi" were in fact misidentified
M. majori. The next year, Nicole Weyeneth and colleagues used cytochrome
b and mitochondrial
D-loop sequences to assess the relationships of Comoran
Miniopterus. They found two unrelated
clades within Malagasy and Comoran samples of "
Miniopterus manavi", neither of which was closely related to
M. newtoni or to Tanzanian samples of
M. minor. During 2009,
Steven Goodman and colleagues published two papers that found a total of five genetically and
morphologically distinct species within
Miniopterus manavi as defined by Peterson and colleagues (1995), up to four of which can be found in a single locality. In order to determine the true identity of
M. manavi, Goodman and Claude Maminirina obtained bats near the
type locality of
M. manavi (the site where the original material was collected, from which the species was described) for inclusion in the analysis; they also sequenced one of Thomas's original specimens. Among the five species they identified,
M. griveaudi occurs on Grande Comore and
Anjouan and in northern and western Madagascar;
M. aelleni occurs on Anjouan and in northern and western Madagascar;
M. brachytragos is found in northern Madagascar only;
M. mahafaliensis is confined to the southwestern part of the island; and
M. manavi itself is known only from the eastern edge of the
Central Highlands. These five species are not each other's closest relatives according to analyses of cytochrome
b sequences and their similarities reflect
convergent evolution. Cytochrome
b suggested that the closest relative of
M. manavi is the slightly larger
M. petersoni from southeastern Madagascar. Two specimens of
M. manavi differed by 1.3% in their cytochrome
b sequences and by 2.5% from
M. petersoni. ==Description==