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

Data of specimen ID, the collection date, collector, sex (male/female), location
and measurement in millimetre (mm) and weight in grams (g) were recorded into
SPSS version 22.0. The measurement and weight are important as mammalogists
rely on this information for specimen identification as well as to study variation
between different populations. The standard body measurements for bats include
head and body length (HB), hind foot length (HF), ear length (E), forearm length
(FA), tail vertebrae length (TV), tibial length (TB) and wingspan (WS). Tibial
length was used to differentiate between an adult from a juvenile. All specimens
with missing measurement were re-measured utilizing the ruler with Mitutoyo
dial calipers adhered to the North American measurement as per guided in
Mammals Collectors’ Manual for the sake of consistency (Nagorsen & Peterson,
1980).

The data was cleaned by a generation of frequency tables to remove redundancy
due to the same entry from more than one person. Box-and plot graph was
generated to detect the outlier and the data, whilst histogram was created to
determine the distribution of the continuous data. Descriptive analysis was
employed to describe the measurements and distribution of both species; while
parametric analysis of independent t-test was used to compare the mean
measurements and weights between male and female P. hypomelanus and P.
vampyrus, only after the normality of data distribution has been assessed.

The distribution of the two species based on collection location was displayed in
Figure 2 prepared using QGIS software version 3.8. The base map was sourced
from the Department of Survey and Mapping Malaysia and OpenStreetMap
(OpenStreetMap, 2020).