An African bat overlooked for two centuries is discovered in Europe

An African bat whose presence in Sicily had remained an unresolved zoological mystery for almost two centuries has now been documented on Pantelleria Island. A study published in Global Ecology and Conservation reports the first solid evidence of the Egyptian slit-faced bat (Nycteris thebaica) in Europe, adding not only a new bat species but also the first representative of the family Nycteridae to the European fauna.

A research team from the University of Naples Federico II, the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Pantelleria National Park recorded the species during targeted acoustic surveys on Pantelleria, a volcanic island in the Sicily Channel between Tunisia and Sicily. The island is a key biogeographic crossroads between North Africa and Europe and has already proved important for understanding how African bats may have reached the central Mediterranean.

„Some zoological records are not lost because the animals have disappeared, but because we stopped looking for them in the right way,“ says lead author Danilo Russo of the University of Naples Federico II and the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. „Nycteris thebaica had been mentioned in nineteenth-century Sicilian literature under uncertain names, but those records lacked specimens, locality data or diagnostic descriptions. For almost two centuries, we could neither confirm nor dismiss those records.“

The Egyptian slit-faced bat is widespread across sub-Saharan Africa and has a discontinuous northern range in North Africa and the Middle East. It is a low-flying, clutter-adapted „whispering“ bat that emits very faint, high-frequency echolocation calls. These calls are difficult to record unless the bat flies very close to the microphone, so the species can easily evade standard acoustic surveys.

After detecting unusual bat calls during passive monitoring, the team conducted a targeted survey near the original recording site. Recorders were placed less than half a metre above the ground and set to high sensitivity to capture the weak calls of a bat flying close to the substrate. The researchers obtained high-quality sequences attributable to N. thebaica, including very short, multi-harmonic frequency-modulated echolocation calls, social vocalisations, and one sequence featuring two bats flying together.

„These recordings indicate that Pantelleria does not simply host an accidental individual,“ explains Mirjam Knörnschild from the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. „The presence of two bats flying together, along with social vocalisations, points to a small, previously undetected population on the island.“

The finding also helps explain why the species was missed in previous surveys. Standard bat monitoring often places microphones higher above the ground, uses triggering thresholds that may fail to detect very faint signals, or relies on automated classifiers that cannot identify species absent from their reference call libraries. The Pantelleria study shows that low-detectability bats may require tailored survey designs, including ground-level microphones, sensitive recording settings and manual screening.

From a biogeographic perspective, the discovery supports the idea that Pantelleria and the Sicily Channel Islands may have served as stepping stones for North African bats. During past low sea-level phases, the central Mediterranean likely offered shorter overwater distances and more exposed landmasses between the Maghreb and Sicily, potentially facilitating colonisation even for bats with slow flight.

„Our study turns a historical uncertainty into a conservation issue,“ says Russo. „While Nycteris thebaica has long persisted unnoticed on Pantelleria, we now need to determine the size of this population, identify its roosting sites, assess whether it also occurs elsewhere in Sicily or the Sicily Channel Islands, and determine how it should be protected.“

Future work will focus on locating roosts, confirming the genetic origin of the Pantelleria population, estimating population size, and assessing potential threats, including wildfires and free-ranging domestic cats. More broadly, the study shows that targeted acoustic sampling can reveal overlooked components of regional mammal faunas, particularly in peripheral populations of faint-calling bats.

This work has received support from the Pantelleria National Park, the Heidehof Stiftung, and the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung.

Image material:

1) Graphical abstract of the publication (© Mirjam Knörnschild)

2) Photo of Nycteris thebaica leaving a tree roost (© Piotr Naskrecki). This photo was not taken on Pantelleria but in Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique.

3) Photo of Nycteris thebaica in flight (© Piotr Naskrecki). This photo was not taken on Pantelleria but in Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique.

Publikation: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecco.2026.e04377