University of Kansas Publications, Museum of Natural History Editorial Committee: E. Raymond Hall, Chairman; Frank B. Cross, Editor; Henry S. Fitch; J. Knox Jones, Jr. Volume 16, No. 8, pp. 777-837, 17 figs. Published December 16, 1968 University of Kansas Lawrence, Kansas PRINTED BY ROBERT R. (BOB) SANDERS, STATE PRINTER TOPEKA, KANSAS 1968 31-9490 Systematics of Megachiropteran Bats in the Solomon Islands BY CARLETON J. PHILLIPS...

The Solomon Islands constitute an archipelago east of the large island of New Guinea and more than a thousand miles off the northeastern coast of Australia. This archipelago, which is principally of volcanic origin although sedimentary layers of calcareous rocks occur on many islands (Lever, 1934; Belkin, 1962), consists of a double chain of islands having a northwest-southeast axis of more than 600 miles. The archipelago is more or less an extension of New Guinea and in fact is connected to it

In the following list, currently-used names of islands are given; when available, older names and variant spellings are indicated in parentheses. For certain islands, especially those visited by field parties from the Bishop Museum or those frequently mentioned in previous literature on bats, some descriptive and ecological information also is provided. Latitude and longitude of islands are from publication no. 881 of the Hydrographic Office of the United States Navy Department (Anonymous, 1944)

The phylogenetic arrangement and nomenclature in the text beyond are mainly that of Laurie and Hill (1954). The synonymies for accounts of genera are as follows: (1) first use of the generic name employed along with the original description, and (2) original proposals, in chronological order, of other generic names subsequently applied to the bat in the Solomons. The synonymies in accounts of species and subspecies are as follows: (1) first use of the accepted name, followed by its type locality

Financial support for this investigation was from (1) a United States Army Medical Research and Development Command grant (DA-MD-49-193-62-G65) to the Entomology Department of the Bernice P. Bishop Museum, and (2) a National Science Foundation grant (2185-4703) to the author, through the Committee on Systematics and Evolutionary Biology of The University of Kansas. I am grateful to many individuals who have helped me in various ways throughout the course of this study. Dr. J. Linsley Gressitt, C

Family PTEROPODIDAE Subfamily Pteropodinae Rousettus Gray 1821. Rousettus Gray, London Medical Repository, 15:299, April 1. 1843. Xantharpyia Gray, List of species ... British Museum, p. 37. 1852. Cynonycteris Peters, Reise nach Mossambique, p. 25. The genus Rousettus occurs throughout the tropical regions of the Old World, and in the Solomons is readily distinguished from all other megachiropteran genera by having both a small claw on the second digit and free caudal vertebrae. The oriental spe