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The Collections of the Two Natives, Near Threatened Pteropid Species in Peninsular Malaysia by 63
the Institute for Medical Research, Malaysia: The Large Flying Fox (Pteropus vampyrus) and
The Collections of the Two Natives, Near Threatened Pteropid Species in Peninsular 61
Island Flying Fox (Pteropus hypomelanus)
Malaysia by the Institute for Medical Research, Malaysia: The Large Flying Fox (Pteropus
vampyrus) and Island Flying Fox (Pteropus hypomelanus)

The island flying foxes feed on fruit and nectar found from wild and cultivated
plants, through their highly specialized sense of sight and smell.

The Biomedical Museum of Institute for Medical Research (IMR) is the only
Biomedical Museum in Malaysia and houses nearly 20,000 of exotic specimen
collections of small mammals (rodents, squirrels, bats), amphibians, and reptiles.
It provides researchers with the source of references in the study of zoonotic
diseases. The Medical Zoology and Medical Ecology Division of IMR was
actively involved in the conservation of Malaysian Biodiversity since 1950's to
1970's, in which a variety of specimens were collected and conserved by the
institutional zoologists. Different bat species were captured to evaluate their
abundance and distribution in Malaysian bats and different ecological habitats, and
also to conduct the parasitic study on the ectoparasites found in bats such as ticks
and mites (Lim, 1966).

Over the past decades, flying fox species are declining steadily and facing the
pressure of extinction as a result of human impacts on the environment such as
deforestation, overhunting and habitat degradation. Consequently, both P.
vampyrus and P. hypomelanus has been recently updated as Endangered species
under the Redlist of Mammals for Peninsular Malaysia 2017 (PERHILITAN,
2017); although earlier about a decade ago, both were only listed as the Least
Concern (LC) species.

The flying foxes are likely to be the only seed dispersers and pollinators for large
tropical trees, which are ecologically and economically important (Djossa et al.,
2008). The seed dispersal by flying foxes, therefore, plays an essential role in
maintaining forests as well as reforestation of those cleared localities.
Nevertheless, human pressure such as expanding human population, urbanization,
and forest fragmentation may have significantly altered the ecology of these two
species. The wide distribution of both species and their abilities to cross oceanic
expanses makes conservation management of these threatened species an
international concern. Hence, continuous monitoring of morphology and habitat
of these two species are of paramount importance since existing studies primarily
focused on the distribution, relative abundance, virus dynamics, and genomics of
flying foxes. The information on the morphology and habitat of both species
remains scarce. This study aimed to evaluate the morphology and habitat of P.
vampyrus and P. hypomelanus to provide references to the future ecological and
zoological researches in the country to compare if any changes have occurred in
the following ecosystem disturbance. This might therefore serve as an important
indicator to boost the conservational status of the two species nationwide and
internationally before the species come to extinction.