Tricolored bat
Perimyotis subflavus
— Where the name comes from
Subflavus is the Latin “yellowish”, from flavus. Perimyotis means “around Myotis”, and is a name of last resort: the species was shuffled between genera more than once — it was long Pipistrellus subflavus — until it was given a genus of its own that declared its uncertain position. The common name looks instead at each single hair, which carries three bands of colour: dark at the base, pale in the middle, dark at the tip.
— Facts
- Group
- Mammals · Mammalia
- Order
- Bats
- Habitat
- Caves and mines in winter, foliage and sheds in summer
- Range
- Eastern North America, from Canada to Honduras
- Size
- 7.5–9 cm including tail, 25 cm wingspan, 4–8 g
- Diet
- Insectivore — small flies and beetles
- Lifespan
- Up to 15 years
— Characteristics
- 01
It is one of the smallest bats in North America.
- 02
In hibernation it becomes covered in droplets of condensation and looks dew-soaked.
- 03
Populations have collapsed by over 90% from white-nose syndrome.
— What sets it apart
In hibernation it covers itself in dew. It chooses the dampest, most stable parts of a cave, where the air is nearly saturated, and stays motionless for months until the vapour condenses on it in thousands of droplets that make it glitter in torchlight. That choice of microclimate is also its undoing: the white-nose fungus thrives in exactly those conditions, and this species is among the worst affected on the continent.
