Historical DNA of rare yellow-eared bats <i>Vampyressa</i> Thomas, 1900 (Chiroptera, Phyllostomidae) clarifies phylogeny and species boundaries within the genus

Patterns of rarity, endemism, and vulnerability are known for four species of yellow-eared bats of the genus <i>Vampyressa</i>: <i>V. melissa</i>, <i>V. voragine</i>, <i>V. elisabethae</i>, and <i>V. sinchi</i>, the last two described based on skull and external morphology. We extracted DNA from the holotypes of <i>V. elisabethae</i> and <i>V. sinchi</i> using strict ancient DNA protocols and sequenced the complete cytochrome-<i>b</i> gene of the mtDNA to investigate the phylogenetic relationships within the genus and employed species-delimitation tests to evaluate the validity of all the currently named species of <i>Vampyressa</i>. The resulting tree topology and our species-delimitation analyses corroborate the validity of <i>V. elisabethae</i> and <i>V. voragine</i>, but places <i>V. sinchi</i> in <i>V. melissa</i>. Based on these results and phenotypic variation, we recognize five valid species in <i>Vampyressa</i> and treat <i>sinchi</i> as a subspecies of a polytypic <i>V. melissa</i>; for which we provide a rediagnosis. Our results show that <i>V. elisabethae</i> is as highly divergent genetically as it is morphologically, and suggest that <i>V. thyone</i>, one of the two species of <i>Vampyressa</i> known to have wide distributions, is a species complex requiring further investigation.