The Hipposideridae are a family of bats commonly known as the Old World leaf-nosed bats. While it has often been seen as a subfamily, Hipposiderinae, of the family Rhinolophidae, it is now more generally classified as its own family. Nevertheless, it is most closely related to Rhinolophidae within the suborder Yinpterochiroptera.

Taxonomy

The Hipposideridae contain 10 living genera and more than 70 species, mostly in the widespread genus Hipposideros. In addition, several fossil genera are known; the oldest fossils attributed to the family are from the middle Eocene of Europe. In their 1997 Classification of Mammals, Malcolm C. McKenna and Susan K. Bell proposed a division of Hipposideridae (called Rhinonycterinae in their work) into three tribes, one with two subtribes, but these tribes turned out to be non-monophyletic and have been abandoned. A different classification was proposed by Hand and Kirsch in 2003. In 2009, Petr Benda and Peter Vallo proposed a separate tribe, Triaenopini, for the genera Triaenops, Paratriaenops, and possibly Cloeotis, synonymised in a 2014 revision (Foley, et al.) that elevated the family Rhinonycteridae. The Hipposideridae have many different families, previously confused to be the same for their similar appearance. The Hipposideridae fulvus is very similar to the Hipposideridae Pomona, which were a part of the same family in the past. The macrobullatus, considered to be a subspecies of the Hipposideridae are also part of a different family. Among the Hipposideridae species, there is an increased amount of mitochondrial differentation, possibly leading to these subspecies being intermixed and confused as one.

Genera

The genera included in Hipposideridae are:

Living

(Note that genus Paracoelops was previously listed for Vietnam is now a synonym of Hipposideros pomona)

Extinct

List of species