Fraternal fruit-eating bat

The fraternal fruit-eating bat (Artibeus fraterculus) is a species of leaf-nosed bat in the family Phyllostomidae found in the drier habitats of Ecuador and Peru. It was first described in 1924 by Harold Elmer Anthony from a specimen collected at Portovelo in Ecuador, long treated as a subspecies of the Jamaican fruit bat, and raised to species level in 1978 by Karl Koopman. The name fraterculus means little brother, because it is the smallest of the large Artibeus bats, with a forearm of 52 to 59 millimetres and a weight of 30 to 55 grams. It is a generalist frugivore that also eats insects, breeds in both wet and dry seasons, and roosts in hollow trees, caves, buildings and mines. The IUCN lists it as least concern.