Schlieffen's Bat - Distribution and Subspecies

Distribution and Subspecies

Schlieffen's bat is found widely across Africa outside the equatorial rainforest. It inhabits a broad band of territory from Mauritania and Senegal in the west across to Namibia, South Africa, Angola and Mozambique in Southern Africa, to Kenya and Tanzania in the African Great Lakes region, to Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti and Eritrea in the Horn of Africa, to Sudan and Egypt in the Nile Valley. It is also found in the south-western Arabian peninsula.

Several subspecies of Schlieffen's bat have been identified. However, there has been little agreement on their status or range. The most recent analysis, as reported in the 2005 edition of Mammal Species of the World, concluded that there is insufficient evidence for the retention of any of these subspecies, and Schlieffen's bat should therefore be considered monotypic.