Tree Bat

The tree bat (Ardops nichollsi) is a species of bat in the family Phyllostomidae and the only species in the genus Ardops. It is found in the Lesser Antilles of the Caribbean, in Antigua, Dominica, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Montserrat, Saint Lucia, Saba, Saint Martin, Sint Eustatius, Saint Kitts, Nevis, Grenada and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. == Taxonomy and evolution == Ardops nichollsi was described by Oldfield Thomas in 1891 as Stenoderma nichollsi, and assigned to Ardops by Gerrit Smith Miller Jr. in 1906. It is the only species in the genus. Several of the subspecies were initially considered full species, but were reconsidered in a 1967 paper by J. Knox Jones and Albert Schwartz which examined newly collected specimens and found little difference in the variation between the named species. The subspecies vary considerably in size but otherwise are very similar. There are five known subspecies: A. n monstserratensis: found on the northern Lesser Antilles, from St. Martin to Marie-Galante. Jones and Schwartz considered A. n. annectens, found on Guadeloupe, Marie-Galate, and Antigua a separate subspecies based on morphological data. However, a 2017 analysis considered it as a synonym of A. n. monsterratensis based on reanalysis of the morphological data…