Taxonomy news

1. The last issue of Journal of Vertebrate Zoology is entirely devoted to small mammals of Africa, with many papers of interest to mammalwatchers.
2. A new rodent genus with three species described from Ecuador.
3. A new langur from Myanmar. Most recent primate splits are not justified, but this one seems legit.
4. Bukhara myotis is a Central Asian bat last seen in the 1960s and believed extinct. I found one in a cave in S Tajikistan in 1989; a few years ago I wrote a short note about it, but two journals rejected it because “sight identification can’t be reliable”, and I didn’t have time to keep resubmitting, having a newborn daughter and all. Now that bat has been found again, also in Tajikistan. It’s sad that so many mammalogists have such outdated attitudes towards sight records. Ornithology has moved on from that decades ago.
5. Plecotus ariel is a synonym of P. wardi.