Desmodus rotundus Occurrence Record Database

The common vampire bat (<i>Desmodus rotundus</i>) is a hematophagous bat species found across the North, Central, and South American continents. <i>Desmodus rotundus </i>is one of the only tree mammal species exclusively having a sanguivorous diet (i.e., blood). The species has a large distributional range and predates on a large range of vertebrate species. <i>Desmodus rotundus</i> is a know reservoir for the rabies virus and contributes to the continued spread of this pathogen across Latin America. Nevertheless, little is known about the historical distribuion of <i>D. rotundus</i> across it range. Historical occurrence data are critical for the assessment of past and current distributions for this species, and is necessary for a plethora of other ecological, biogeographic, and epidemiological studies. This is a dataset of <i>D. rotundus </i>historical occurrence including &gt;37,000 locality reports across the Americas to facilitate spatiotemporal studies of the species.<br>Data and metadata definitions. The following table provides standardized definitions of each occurrence metadata based on the the Darwin Core Archive format. Each piece of metadata for each occurrence is organized and recorded under the listed column headers.<br>Validation Code: This file contains code for usage and cleaning of the <i>Desmodus rotundus </i>record database. This code was also used for the Technical Validation process of the final <i>D. rotunudus</i> dataset.