The Pacific coastal desert of Peru harbors a unique bat fauna, including narrowly endemic taxa adapted to arid environments. This region was also the setting where several pre-Incan civilizations flourished. The Moche culture (100–850 CE) was one of those, with a rich and diverse material culture that included strikingly realistic ceramic representations of the regional flora and fauna. In particular, one Mochica pottery vessel is in the form of a bat that, based on external characteristics (large pinnae and tragus, pinnae connected by high band of membrane across the forehead, and lack of noseleaf), clearly represents an individual of the vespertilionid genus Histiotus. The morphological characteristics observed in this vessel, in addition to the area of influence of the Moche culture, suggests that this vessel depicts a species previously unknown to science that we describe here as new on the basis of two specimens obtained in 2012 in the Peruvian department of Piura. Our new species, Histiotus mochica, can be distinguished from other congeners by having unicolored dorsal fur, medial lobes of pinnae greater than 9.5 mm wide, and a well-developed (>4.3 mm high) transverse band of skin connecting the pinnae. Cytochrome b sequence data indicate that the new species is sister to H. humboldti from the Andes of Colombia and northern Ecuador. The new species is a medium-sized Histiotus that clusters with H. laephotis, H. velatus, and with small specimens of H. montanus in our multivariate analyses. With the description of H. mochica, the diversity of the genus increases to 11 species. We provide a key based on external characters of all known species of Histiotus.

中文翻译：

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Histiotus Gervais 的一个新物种，1856 年（Chiroptera，Vespertilionidae），来自秘鲁北部太平洋海岸

秘鲁的太平洋沿岸沙漠拥有独特的蝙蝠动物群，包括适应干旱环境的狭隘地方性分类群。这个地区也是几个前印加文明繁荣的地方。莫切文化（公元 100-850 年）就是其中之一，拥有丰富多样的物质文化，包括对当地动植物的逼真的陶瓷表现。特别是，一个 Mochica 陶器是蝙蝠的形式，根据外部特征（大耳廓和耳屏，耳廓由横跨前额的高带连接，没有鼻叶），清楚地代表了 vespertilionid 的个体Histiotus 属。在这艘船上观察到的形态特征，除了莫切文化的影响区域，表明这艘船描绘了一种以前科学上未知的物种，我们在这里根据 2012 年在秘鲁皮乌拉省获得的两个标本将其描述为新物种。我们的新物种 Histiotus mochica 可以通过具有单色背毛、大于 9.5 毫米宽的耳廓内侧裂片和连接耳廓的发达（> 4.3 毫米高）横向皮肤带与其他同类相区别。细胞色素 b 序列数据表明，这个新物种是哥伦比亚安第斯山脉和厄瓜多尔北部的 H. humboldti 的姐妹。在我们的多变量分析中，这个新物种是一种中等大小的 Histiotus，与 H. laephotis、H. velatus 以及小型 H. montanus 样本聚集在一起。随着H. mochica的描述，该属的多样性增加到11种。