The Case of the Soprano Pipistrelle

Vespertilio is Latin for 'bat'; it denotes a creature of the evening. The term was used for bats in general by sixteenth-century writers. In time, it was applied to a genus: in 1774 Schreber wrote of Vespertilio pipistrellus, which had the French name 'pipistrelle'. The specific name eventually displaced Vespertilio and the genus became Pipistrellus, largely because pipistrellus was the only known member of the genus.

In 1825 an English naturalist thought he had found a new species of Vespertilio (as it was still called): it was small, so he named it V. pigmaeus. He had found only a single specimen. It is still in the British Museum and has recently been re-classified as a young P. pipistrellus.

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