Hipposideridae

The Hipposideridae are a family of bats commonly known as the Old World leaf-nosed bats. While it has often been seen as a subfamily, Hipposiderinae, of the family Rhinolophidae, it is now more generally classified as its own family. Nevertheless, it is most closely related to Rhinolophidae within the suborder Pteropodiformes (or Yinpterochiroptera).

Contents

• Genera
• List of species
• References

The Hipposideridae contain 10 living genera and more than 70 species, mostly in the widespread genus Hipposideros. In addition, several fossil genera are known; the oldest fossils attributed to the family are from the middle Eocene of Europe. In their 1997 Classification of Mammals, Malcolm C. McKenna and Susan K. Bell proposed a division of Hipposideridae (called Rhinonycterinae in their work) into three tribes, one with two subtribes, but these tribes turned out to be non-monophyletic and have been abandoned. A different classification was proposed by Hand and Kirsch in 2003. More recently, Petr Benda and Peter Vallo (2009) proposed a separate tribe, Triaenopini, for the genera Triaenops, Paratriaenops, and possibly Cloeotis.