In a study published in the Journal of Mammalogy on July 2, 2026, a team led by Prof. Li Song from the Kunming Institute of Zoology (KIZ) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences described a new bat species and reported the first national record of another Murina species in China.

The researchers found that five Murina specimens collected from southern Yunnan (Honghe Prefecture and Xishuangbanna) were morphologically and genetically distinct from all known Murina species. Through integrative taxonomic approaches combining classical morphology and molecular phylogenetics, the team identified these specimens as a new species: Murina huanglianensis S. Li & Mou, sp. nov. Morphologically, M. huanglianensis can be distinguished from its congeners by the distribution of golden guard hairs, the reduced sagittal and lambdoidal crests on the skull, and specific dental ratios. At the molecular level, mitochondrial DNA phylogenetic and genetic distance analyses confirmed its valid species status, with genetic distances of 4.3%-5.4% from its closest relatives.

Using the same methods, the researchers also identified a specimen collected from Mengla County, southern Yunnan, as Murina annamitica C. M. Francis & Eger, 2012, a species originally described from Laos in 2012 and distributed across the Indochinese Peninsula. This finding represents the first national-level species record for China and extends the known distribution of M. annamitica northward into southwestern China.

Southern Yunnan, bordering Vietnam and northern Laos, preserves intact habitats ranging from tropical seasonal rainforests to montane moss evergreen broad-leaved forests, serving as a critical ecological corridor connecting the Indochinese Peninsula with southwestern China's biodiversity hotspots. The discovery of the new species and the new national record enriches China's Murina species inventory, provides key evidence for understanding Murina dispersal routes and biogeographic patterns between Southeast Asia and southwestern China, and underscores that bat diversity in China's southwestern border region may still be significantly underestimated.

Reference: New Murina (Chiroptera: Vespertilionidae) species and the first Murina annamitica record in China, Journal of Mammalogy (2026). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/jmammal/gyag035

Murina huanglianensis S. Li & Mou, sp. nov.