The Bats of Bihar: Taxonomy and Ecology

Bihar (Area: App. 1, 74,000 Sq km., fig. 1) lies in the eastern part of India, bounded on the north by Nepal, on the east by West Bengal, on the south by Orissa,on the northwest by Uttar Pradesh and on the southwest by Madhya Pradesh.  It may be divided into two natural regions viz., (1) plains to the north and wouth of the Ganga river and (2) Chota Nagpur Plateau. Climatically northern Bihar is temperate while the southern is hotter.  Annual rainfall ranges between 100 and 150 cm.  Besides some sporadie information about bat fauna of Bihar by Blyth (1863), Anderson (1881), Blanford (1891), Wroughton (1915, 1918), Nath (1950), Ellerman and Morrison-Scott (1951), Sinha and Chakraborty (1971), Venkateshwarlu (1973) and Sinha (1980, 1981c), no consolidated taxonomical and ecological account is available.  The present paper removes this lacuna in our knowledge. collections were made by the author during (1977-82) from various parts of northern and southern Bihar covering all the 33 districts.  Some material from Bihar as well as other states in India, and Burma, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, available in the Zoological Survey of India, Calcutta, was also studies.  Twenty seven known species and subspecies from Bihar have been thoroughly studied in this paper.