Pristine mustached bat


The pristine mustached bat is an extinct Late Quaternary species of bat in the endemic Neotropical family Mormoopidae. It was distributed in Cuba and possibly Florida.

Distribution

This bat is known only from subfossils. It was described from Late Quaternary cave deposits in Cuba and found also in Rancholabrean cave deposits in southern Florida.
distribution of the pristine mustached bat. Pteronotus pristinus - red, P. cf. pristinus - black.
Florida specimens were only tentatively referred to Pteronotus cf. P. pristinus, because they could not be directly compared with the Cuban material, but they may represent P. pristinus.
This is the only occurrence of Pteronotus in the United States, fossil or recent. Cuba is the most likely source for West Indian bats in Florida.

Extinction

In Florida, the pristine mustached bat became locally extinct at the end of the Pleistocene, what probably resulted from the rise in sea level, the subsequent flooding of caves and loss of roosting sites.
The sea level in Florida was as much as 100 m lower in late Pleistocene, as well water tables, and cave systems in Monkey Jungle Hammock, Cutler Hammock and Rock Springs were dry. But during the latest Pleistocene the rising sea level caused flooding of these cave systems and destroyed a hot and humid microclimate of so-called hot caves. Currently two first of them are sediment-filled sinkholes few meters above sea level, third one is submerged.
In these three sites in southern peninsula, the sea level stand change presumably was also reason of extirpation of another tropical cave-dwelling bat in the Neotropical family Mormoopidae and one North American species as well. The fourth species - big brown bat became rare in Florida caves.
Such a pattern of extinction or extirpation is known also from many small islands in West Indies.