Abstract
Yellow-shouldered bats (genus Sturnira Gray, 1842), found throughout Latin America, are not well understood taxonomically. Four specimens of Sturnira from Bolivia and Venezuela possess dental characteristics differing from those of currently known species, leading us to regard them as representing a new species. We describe external, dental, and cranial characteristics and conduct a multivariate comparison using 29 morphometric characters for 44 male specimens of Sturnira erythromos, S. ludovici, S. hondurensis, and the new species. In a principal components analysis, most of the variation was summarized on component I (78.5% of total character variance), a general size vector. A multiple-comparisons test of component I projections showed all differences among species pairs to be highly significant, except that between S. ludovici and S. hondurensis. For the 29 individual characters, the new species was statistically different from S. erythromos in 21, S. ludovici in 13, and S. hondurensis in 14. The new species has a unique combination of dental characteristics, including bicuspid upper incisors, trilobed lower incisors, and smooth 1st and 2nd lower molars.
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