Columbus and Rediscovery of the New World

In October we celebrate Christopher Columbus's rediscovery of the New World.

On October 11, 1492, Rodrigo de Triana shouted "land!" from the mast of the Santa Maria. The next morning, on the island of Guanahani, modern Bahamas, Columbus and his crew began an unprecedented conquest of the Americas that involved the extinction of thousands of species and the introduction of many others.

Engraving from 1496 showing explorers on their way to the New World. 

The most expensive, and even outrageous of human enterprises have been military in nature. Science usually tags alongside such enterprises, but not riding shotgun. Columbus's exploration was funded by the interest of the Spanish sovereigns in search of new riches and a military position that could compete with the growing powers of Portugal and England. And although it brought map makers (cartographers), cosmographers, and geographers, scientific interest was low in his first voyages. 

It was only after that science extended its arms outwards, alongside colonization. Soon after the rediscovery--and I continue to use the term rediscovery because humans had already discovered the American continent some 15,000 years before, and northern Europeans 1000 years earlier--native Amerindians succumbed to the new colonist's diseases, enslavement, and weapons. Unfortunately, the science that came along was opportunistic and cast a heavyweight on the existence of many native species with scant documentation.

The first colonists had to eat off the land, and in many cases brought with them animals that soon became feral where they did not evolve or were not suited for ecologically, driving other native species to extinction.

Native fruit plants from an engraving in Benzoni's Historia del Mondo Novo (1563).

An interesting case is that told by father Bartolome de la Casas. In 1512, during the official exploration and conquest of Cuba by Diego Velazquez, he and his crew killed and ate thousands of Cuban macaws (Ara cubensis) in Casaharta, a town in central-northern Cuba.
The Cuban macaw has been extinct in Cuba since the 19th century but had been rare since the 18th century, when deforestation and overhunting for its beautiful feathers drove it to rarity, and later extinction. In the mid 19th century, the German naturalist Johannes Gundlach found it in the Zapata Swamp, southwestern Cuba.
A similar case has occurred to the Cuban crows (Corvus minutus and Corvus nasicus), and the Cuban ivorybill woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) to name a few.  These species had survived at least a million years of climate change, and over 5000 years of Amerindian coexistence, to become extinct during the colonization (see some of my own research on this here).

But the scientifically inclined explorers served well by documenting what they could about the lush natural richness of the Americas. Among them, Peter Martyr, a geographer, was the first historian of the New World. Others such as the Spanish Oviedo and the Italian Benzoni included detailed accounts of the native species found in the American Eden. Plants, animals, and even cryptic mythological creatures were initially described, such as the manati, a water mammal though to be a siren. Its scientific mammalian order--Sirenia--carries the idiosyncrasies of the era that brought it--through science--to world knowledge.

Engraving of a manati, a sirenian marine mammal as described by Oviedo in his
Historia General de las Indias (1547).

Progressus: A project for Cuban Archaeology

Several months ago I expressed my excitement in becoming part of the archeological project Progressus. Since then, I have collaborated with Odlanyer Hernandez, Boris Rodriguez, Cristian de la Rosa, Leonel P. Orozco, Jorge Garcell, and Ricardo A. Viera (to name a few); all Cuban archeologists and historians at the front of archaeological research, and concerned with the integration of archaeological and historical data in the rescue and preservation of Cuban cultural heritage.

Since then, Ricardo Viera and I have written two small notes on several aspects of Matanzas history and archaeology. One is dedicated to the bombardment of the city of Matanzas 27 April 1898. This was the first bellic act of the Spanish-Cuba-American war soon after the USS Maine blew in the bay of Havana on February 15 of that same year. The other pertains to our research on the archaeology of clay tobacco pipes excavated from fort Castillo de San Severino and published in the International Journal of Historical Archaeology, aforementioned here.

Some of our colleagues and members of Progressus mentioned above contributed greatly to this research since many of them have published extensively on the fort's archaeology. It is my pleasure to be able to contribute to their great body of research and to be part of their team. Moreover, there are plans of making Progressus a great venue for international collaboration, including Argentinean, Swedish, Cuba, and American researchers to deepen our understanding of Cuban historical archaeology.

Please visit Progressus blog here to meet our colleagues, and to stay informed on our work, contributions, and future plans. There you will find articles, photographs, and articles on battlefields, fortifications, and artifacts related to the local history of Matanzas, Cuba. There are surely interesting findings down the pike, as we continue to unravel our common history.

Stay tuned for more news!

The living cave floor: intro to cave faunas

E. A. Martell, one of the first professional cave explorers, expressed in 1894 that "caverns and abysses are natural laboratories ready for numerous and curious researchers".

Those who visit caves frequently notice that some caves are alive! Walk into a cave room and with a swipe of the lantern you see the cave floor move! - Seems like something out of a horror film, but caves are truly alive.

Cave roaches of the family Polyphagidae, scavengers of the guano cave floors. This is an example of a guanophile troglobites. 

Caves are alive because they are teeming with life. From the microscopic viruses and bacteria to the much more complex bats, and even humans, caves provide a subterranean environment that is both beautiful and mysterious, resulting in the specialization of extraordinary organisms.

American roach Periplaneta americana (Blattidae) another common cave scavenger. 

The subterranean world is a complex environment. In caves, light enters unevenly. The deepest rooms, those farthest away from the entrance are the darkest if no other source of light exists. But even in such absence of light, organisms proliferate and evolve. These cave organisms can be defined or grouped depending on their cave habitat and preferences. Each has its own niche.

Troglobites are organisms that are strict cave dwellers, and complete their life cycles deep inside caves. Troglophiles are occasional cave dwellers. They do not complete their life cycle inside the cave, but they could if needed or preferred. They can be facultative cave inhabitants.

Trogloxenes, on the other hand, are similar to troglophiles in that they too are facultative cave dwellers, but their life cycles always require they leave the cave, surfacing to eat or reproduce. In this case, most organisms that people associate with cave dwelling are readily trogloxenes. Bats, birds like oil birds, owls, swallows, some reptiles, amphibians, and several species of insects, are all trogloxenes.

Cavernicolan glowworm in a cave in the Dominican Republic. Photographs courtesy of Adrian Tejedor. This is the larval state of a trogloxene arthropod. It is bioluminescent and truly interesting to observe. 

Other cave organisms are strictly aquatic cave dwellers. These are called stygobites, for they can only live in cave ponds or lakes. The blind fish and arthropods that live in vadose water lakes found within deep parts of a cave system represent this group. These organisms are very specialized. They have adapted to the dark aquatic environments and have lost their eyesights, color pigmentation, or eyes altogether.

There are organisms that can be considered accidentals because they enter caves by falling in, or because they are momentarily attracted by food or shelter inside. These include several mammals such as rodents and carnivores, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and many arthropods. Troglodyte is a term reserved for humans who use caves as a home or shelter. Humans have been using caves since the paleolithic, nearly a million years ago!

A carcass of a Cuban fruit-eating bat Artibeus jamaicensis eaten by
cave roaches of the family Polyphagidae: scavengers or the cave floor.
Cueva de Los Nesofontes, Mayabeque, Cuba 2003.

Caves not only provide secluded microclimates but microhabitats that are richly ecologically stratified and interconnected. An example is illustrated by numerous species of different bacteria and arthropods, that as an adaptation, live off the bat droppings (or guano) deposited in cave floors. These are known as guanophiles and are often troglobitic arthropods.

Plants growing from seeds brought in the excrement
of fruit bats A. jamaicensis. The Dominican Republic, 2004.

Trogloxenes often serve as the food of troglobites. Many are scavengers that feed on decomposing matter brought in by other organisms, such as seeds brought in by fruit bats, or the dying bats themselves, as is the case of the Cuban fruit bat Artibeus jamaicensis carcass devoured by cave-floor roaches in a cave in Cuba shown above.
Many of these organisms are agents of bone accumulations and dispersion within caves, a micro-field within taphonomy that I am most interested in. See my previous ruminations on this previous post.

Decomposed and guano-buried funnel-eared bat Natalus major eaten by small cave-floor ticks genus Pantricola (?). Los Haitises, the Dominican Republic, 2004.

A wide variety of organisms has evolved in caves. These are characterized by intricate specializations such as staged reproduction cycles, feeding mechanisms, or sensitivities to light that allows them to exist only in the intricate microclimates-ecosystems found in the subterranean world. Such diversity and these special characteristics have been naturally selected over millennia depending on the distribution of these organisms and the niches they inhabit withing the geography of a cave.

Cave lake in the interior of Feather's Cave, Matanzas, Cuba.This lake used to have blind fish of the genus Lucifuga. 

Most of troglobites and trogloxenes are relics of the past. Some of the aquatic stygofauna are descendants of freshwater, intertidal, or marine organisms that became trapped in a cave pools and lakes, becoming isolated there. Most of them evolved from exterior faunas that adapted to the cave conditions after isolation.

Cuban boa Chilabrothus angulifer on the hunt for fruit bats. Nesofonte's Cave, Mayabeque, Cuba. This species is a trogloxene that uses caves as a refuge, for feeding and reproduction. These reptiles have adapted to hang from the walls and catch flying bats. 

Exterior faunas enter caves with inflowing rivers, floodwaters, and groundwaters that invade, actively or passively, cave environments. Others become trapped or fall in accidentally as mentioned before. More so, streams and rivers can carry inside sediment and plant debris often carrying organisms from the exterior into the cave. These organisms then become underground colonizers, evolving in isolation from their exterior populations. The cave itself being the barrier to their gene flow.

Cave gours or pools from Bellamar's Cave, in Matanzas. Some of the green and red films that can be seen represent cyanobacteria that live off the chemicals of the rocks and the dim light that is artificially provided by the tour lamps (they are photosynthetic, thus needing light). 

But caves are sensitive environments and even the most minute changes can alter their microhabitats. Alterations to these delicate subterranean environments include hoards of people using caves as a tourist attraction, or "collecting" their endemic faunas or crystal formations, often downgrading their natural beauty. Or affecting their natural flora and fauna, thus affecting the natural cycles that occur within caves. Cave microenvironments are also sensitive to overall climate change, and rising sea levels. The former have the potential to drown existing habitats, and thus pushing many cave endemics to extinction or habitat fragmentation.

The isolation of subterranean environments makes cave faunas interesting subjects to the study of evolutionary pathways, genetics, biogeography, and even virology (-the Ebola and Zaire viruses seem to have evolved in African cave environments-). Some biologists consider caves even as islands, isolated natural laboratories for evolution and natural selection. 

I think Martell was right. And like him, and many other generations of cave scientists, also known as speleologists, we continue to be attracted to caves and their intricacies. We study and divulge the beauty and complexity of caves and cave systems with the hope of understanding such environments and ecosystems better, hopefully helping us protect and understand their faunas more effectively. 

I hope this post has been informative of other interesting aspects of caves since I have already covered bats, hot caves, and cave formation in my previous posts. This post is in honor of those who dedicate their time, and often health, to study caves and unraveling the mysteries of the subterranean world.

Stay tuned for more future ruminations on caves and cave faunas!

In memoriam et causa honoris: Johannes Gundlach

The german naturalist Johannes Christoph Gundlach was born on this date in 1810. Originally from the town of Kessel (Hesse) in Germany, he lived most of his adult life in the Caribbean island of Cuba, where he became one of its most productive naturalists.

His contributions are widely encompassing from the invertebrate mollusks to the sophisticated bats, and still relevant today. Gundlach's natural curiosity and keen taxidermy technique are well appreciated and respected by Caribbean biologists and paleontologists. The specimens he collected and prepared are treasured by many museums throughout the World. Many Caribbean species carry his name in his honor.
This post is a small tribute to his life and work and a token for the inspiration he has been in my natural interests.

Johannes Gundlach was the youngest of the seven sons of Johann Gundlach and Marie Cristine Rethberg. Since a young age, the family moved to Marburg, where his father was a professor of physics and mathematics at the Phillips University.

Since young had been interested in the natural sciences. He learned the art of taxidermy or embalming animals from his brother Henry, who was a medical student. But, although Johannes is unsuccessful in his earliest studies, he excels later as a student of zoological sciences of the University of Marburg, where he received a doctorate degree in 1837.


Dr. Gundlach arrived in Cuba in 1839. He came to Cuba, along with other two important German naturalists, Edward Otto and Louis Pfeiffer. He was passing through on his way to Suriname, by invitation of a colleague. However, his colleague died, and Gundlach decided to stay in Cuba: an island he soon fell in love with.

In Cuba, he met Carlos Booth from Matanzas, who invited him to stay at his coffee state near Cardenas. Those years were very prosperous for Gundlach, and soon the Cuban countryside revealed natural jewels to him. Immediately he discovers news species of birds, bats, mollusks, and butterflies. Among these is the Cuban bumblebee hummingbird Mellisuga helenae, named in honor of Mrs. Helena Booth, and first published by the Galician Juan Lembeye in his work "Aves de la Isla de Cuba" in 1850. This is likely the most famous of his discoveries. Others include the bats Pteronotus quadridens, Phyllonycteris poeyi, Nycticeous cubanus, among many other birds, mollusks, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals. The list is indeed very long.

Whilst in residence in Cuba, Gundlach collaborated with Cuban, American, British, and German colleagues, to whom he sent specimens collected and prepared by himself. These included the already mentioned Felipe Poey, Carlos de la Torre, William Sharp, Wilhelm Peters, Dr. Lawrence, and others of revered relevance in the world of species classification and naming (taxonomy and systematics of today).

Cuban red-bellied woodpecker Melanerpes superciliaris collected by J. Gundlach near Matanzas, Cuba.

His collection grew quickly, and between 1842 and 1852 he established a small museum. Many of the specimens showcased there are preserved today in Cuban, European, and American museums.

The realization of having had the opportunity to hold specimens collected by Gundlach, still with his handwritten tag, had been a lifelong dream until recently. Visit my previous post about museum collections to find out more about this experience.

During his 50 year stay in Cuba, Gundlach published numerous articles, and at least 5 monographs dedicated to the mammals, birds, and crustaceans of Cuba. He traveled throughout the island, and also visited Puerto Rico, where he is today revered too as an important zoologist for his additional contributions there.

Tag of a Cuban red-bellied woodpecker Melanerpes superciliaris collected
by J. Gundlach.

Dr. Gundlach died on march 15 of 1896, in the city of Havana. He is buried in the Colon Cemetery. Today he is remembered for inspiring many generations of naturalists and zoologists.




The details for this post come from several sources. Most come from Gilberto Silva-Taboada (1983) Los Murcielagos de Cuba, Editorial Cientifico-Tecnico, La Habana. The others are cited in the following:

Garcia, Florentino. 1987. Las Aves de Cuba: Subespecies endemicas, vol. 2. Electron, Gente Nueva, La Habana.

Garcia Gonzalez, Armando: Gundlach, Johann Cristoph in La Web de Biografias http://www.mcnbiografias.com/app-bio/do/show?key=gundlach-johann-cristoph

Vilaró, Juan (March 1897). "Sketch of John Gundlach". Appleton's Popular Science Monthly: 691–697.

For additional information in Spanish about Carlos de la Torre and Johannes Gundlach, visit my other blog SanCarlosdeMatanzas.blogspot.com

The Bats of Cuba

Bats inhabit nearly every landmass on the planet, with the exception of the arctic and Antarctica, reaching their maximum diversity in the tropics. Current tallies rank bat diversity at 202 genera and over a thousand species! (Simmons, 2005).

Bats are highly specialized mammals. Not only can they truly fly (meaning powered flight), but they use echolocation to navigate and detect prey while in flight. Echolocation is a way of navigation by echoes, which bats and other mammals like dolphins emit to sense their environment and find food. Some birds, like the oilbird Steatornis caripensis, uses echolocation, but at a level we can hear. In addition to their characteristic webbed wings, their eyesight is better in the dark than ours, demystifying their bad reputation of poor eyesight.

Leach's single leaf-nosed bat Monophyllus redmani (subspecies clinedaphus) a
pollen-nectar feeder Microchiropteran common to the Greater Antilles

Chiropterans are divided into two groups: the small echolocating bats or Microchiroptera, and the non-echolocating and much larger Megachiroptera. The giant bats portrayed in movies often represent the large fruit-eating Megachiropterans. They are not all vampire bats!    

Ecologically, bats play keystone roles in the consumption of insects, distribution of plant seeds, and pollination of plants. Other bats are carnivores, also helping maintain the ecological balance of the ecosystems they inhabit.

Bats are the most diverse mammals of the Cuban archipelago representing over 75% of Cuba's mammalian fauna! Of the 34 species of mammals recorded in Cuba, 26 are bats. Currently, these 26 species are classified into six main groups including the nose-leaf bats (phyllostomids), the funnel-eared bats (natalids), the fisher bulldog bat (noctilionid), the free-tailed mastiffs (molossids), the insectivorous ghost-faced bats (mormoopids) and the vespertilionids. The majority are well distributed within the main island of Cuba, the isle of Pines, and a few of the thousand keys that make up the archipelago (Silva, 1983; Mancina, 2011, 2012).

Waterhouse's leaf-nosed bat Macrotus waterhousei
and the Cuban fig-eating bat Phyllops falcactus digitally
drawn by biologist and bat specialist Dr. Adrian Tejedor from
field sketches of specimens captured in Pinar del Rio.

The Cuban archipelago is the largest of the Antillean islands. It is located in the Antillean subzone of the Neotropics where it enjoys a warm weather and abundant rainfall most of the year. The geological formation of the Caribbean islands provided an intricate and complex mosaic of calcium-rich rocks, such as limestone, so important to cave formation and varied soils. Altogether, these variables give rise to lush vegetation, which supported by the warm climate, incites Cuba's biodiversity, especially of bats.

The Cuban archipelago, in the Caribbean basin, as seen in Google Earth.

Geologically, Cuba has been available for bat colonization since the latest Eocene (MacPhee and Iturralde, 1994). This means that there have been somewhat permanent group of islands where Cuba is located today, at least for the last 35 million years, giving ample time for bats to reach it and evolve there.
In the Pliocene - 5 million years ago - the islands had their largest subaerial extent, and thus their largest landmass increase to date (Iturralde, 2010). This was followed by the multiple landmass fluctuations experienced during the Quaternary glaciations. During the last 800,000 years, the Cuban archipelago increased and decreased in size at least 20 times, with the glacial periods decreasing sea levels, and the interglacials increasing it. This is within a range of ~20 meters from the modern standard. In effect, this had substantial effects on the formation of karstic features, such as caves, that serve some bats as roosts, affected plant distribution, and likely also the distribution and evolution of bats in the island. But most importantly, it likely played a role on the total number of species the archipelago could sustain.

A lone Cuba fruit bat Artibeus jamaicensis parvipes in roost in Cueva Ambrosio,
Varadero, alongside Amerindian cave pictographs.

During the Quaternary, Cuba, and the Bahamas acted like a single archipelago. Today that archipelago is mostly drowned by higher sea levels. Increased sea levels likely flooded potential cave roosts affecting strict cave dwellers. There are bats that have adapted not only to live in caves but also preferring hotter environments within cave systems. Caves with hotter than normal chambers are called "hot caves" because the temperature in some of its rooms increases to above 40 degrees C with a relative humidity above 90 percent. These hot environment form in chambers with restricted access, in which large colonies of the bats roost. Their body heat, perspiration, urine and droppings, all within a very restricted and poorly ventilated cave room results in the abnormal increase in room temperature and humidity. Hot cave bats include the pollen-eater Phyllonycteris poeyi and Pteronotus quadridens.

The changes in world climate during the last 2 million years, or that Quaternary epoch that we've been referring to, brought changes in rainfall, temperatures, and potential land size, therefore potentially affecting different species. However, bats were not significantly culled by the Quaternary climatic fluctuations, as far as we can tell today from the fossil record, in comparison to other mammals groups, like monkeys and sloths, which disappeared completely. Cuba lost only three species during the last glacial maximum, ~18,000 years ago, as indicated by the fossil record of Cueva El Abron, in Pinar del Rio (see Suarez and Diaz-Franco, 2003; Balseiro, 2011). Others survived until a thousand years ago or less (Orihuela, 2012; Orihuela and Tejedor, 2012, Orihuela et al, in prep).

The greater bulldog bat Noctilio leporinus. This is Cuba's largest bat. It feeds mostly on fish,
but it has been observed eating insects near street lamps.

Cuban bats, like most bats, inhabit most ecosystems where they have evolved adaptations to many forms of feeding. There are bats that eat insects, seeds, fruits, nectar, pollen, and some that feed only on blood, such as the infamous vampire bats, or fish - as the Noctilio leporinus above. In the past, there were vampire bats in Cuba. Vampire bats are locally extinct in Cuba today, but their fossil remains suggest their presence on the main island up to several hundred years ago! (Suarez, 2005; Orihuela, 2011, 2012) (see my previous post on vampire bats here).

Thomas Horsfield on the right and John Edward Grey on the left.
Both men dedicated time to collecting and describing the first Cuban bats during the XIX century.

We owe the first published account on Cuban bats to Thomas Horsfield, who sent a letter to the prestigious Zoological Journal in 1828 while he resided in Cuba. Horsfield and the British naturalist William Sharp MacLeay sent specimens to the British museum. These specimens allowed John Edward Grey to properly describe the first species in 1840 in his article "Description of some Chiroptera discovered in Cuba", published in the Annals of the Natural History, volume IV (Silva, 1983).

The Antillean fruit-eating bat Brachyphylla cavernarum and the big free-tailed bat Nyctinomops macrotis
lithographs from Grey's first description of Cuban bats. These are also the first graphic depiction of any Cuban bat.
Lithographs made by the french J. Basire in 1839. B.cavernarum here is likely B. nana but nana was not properly
described until the early XX century.

Since then, and no doubt thanks to the efforts of many naturalists such as Johannes Gundlach in the XIX century and Gilberto Silva-Taboada of the XX, among others, the knowledge on the natural history of Cuban bats grew steadily. Their research quickly demonstrated the diversity of the Cuban bat fauna. There are more species in Cuba, with species representing most of the known New World groups, than in all the North American continent!

  Parnell's mustached bat Pteronotus parnelli from Nesofontes Cave near Matanza, Cuba.

The Cuban bat fauna is surrounded in interesting stories of accidental discoveries and rediscoveries. Such as it happened to the two bat specialists, the Cuban mastozoologist G. Silva-Taboada and Karl Koopman of the American Musem of Natural History (NY) while mistnetting bats in the Pan de Guajaibon, Pinar del Rio, in the 1950s. There they caught a living Cuban pallid bat Antrozous koopmani, the only one ever caught alive for decades. This is a species similar to the pallid bat Antrozous pallidus of the arid western U.S. The Cuban pallid was previously known from a handful of isolated skulls and two specimens preserved in spirits collected in the early decades of the XX century. The feat his yet to be repeated. Antrozous koopmani is today the rarest of Cuban bats, and is presumed nearly extinct (Mancina, 2012).

The list is followed by the greater funnel-eared bat Natalus primus, a critically endangered species known alive only from the single location of La Barca cave in Guanahacabibes, extreme western Cuba. There it was rediscovered by biologist Adrian Tejedor in 1991. Tejedor has written several interesting articles and a monograph on the rare and interesting funnel-eared bats (Natalids) of Cuba and the Caribbean (Tejedor, 2011 and citations therein). Cuba has other two funnel-eared bats. One of them, Nyctiellus lepidus, is one of the smallest bats in the world, known in Cuba as the "butterfly bat". The other, Chilonatalus macer, is similar to the Natalus major on the right of the image below but smaller.  Cuban natalids are all are endemic.

Left: Pteronotus quadridens from Hispaniola. Right: Hispaniolan funnel-eared bat
Natalus major from Cueva de Los Patos, also in Hispaniola.
These are small insectivores that live only in caves.

Other interesting records include Myotis sodalis, likely an errant from Florida found mummified by G. Silva in the city of Havana during the winter of 1966 (Silva, 1983). Eumops perotis, likely a vagrant or erroneous record dating back to 1839, a tree-dwelling Lasiurus insularis found by Ricardo Viera on the banks of the Yumuri River, Matanzas, in 2004, and our rediscovery of Desmodus rotundus in 2003; the fifth vampire bat fossil record from Cuba, among other informative, but isolated discoveries (Silva, 1983; Viera, 2004; Orihuela, 2010; Orihuela et al, in prep.). To this adds an array of new species and new deposits rich in bat fossils (Silva, 1974; Suarez, 2005; Suarez and Diaz-Franco, 2003; Mancina and Garcia, 2005; Jimenez et al., 2005; Balseriro, 2011; Orihuela, 2012).

Most of these latter species, however, are either accidental records, critically endangered, extirpated or extinct today. In addition to the extant 26 species, there are 8 disappeared species for a total of 34 known to have existed in Cuba at least during the last 20,000 years. The complex account of Cuban bat extinctions is reserved for an upcoming post; a topic most interesting to me, and the focus of most of my research.

Stay tuned!

The greater Cuban funnel-eared bat Natalus primus, severely endangered
and extant only in Cueva la Barca, Guanacahabibes, western Cuba.
Digital painting by, and copyright of Adrian Tejedor.

References

There are more citations, especially on area restriction, bat habitat, feeding, and climatic changes of the Quaternary that, if included, would have made this post a bit more tedious. I think, however, that the references below, in addition to the work of Angel Soto-Centeno, David Steadman, Danny Rojas and Liliana Davalos, will provide a good background for those interested in keeping up with this ever-growing body of literature.

Balseriro, F. 2011. Los murcielagos extinctos. pp: 171-177 en Borroto-Paez, R. y C. A. Mancina (eds) Mamiferos en Cuba. UPC print, Vaasa

Jiménez, O., M. M. Condis, and E. García. 2005. Vertebrados post-glaciales en un residuario fósil de Tyto alba scopoli (Aves: Tytonidae) en el occidente de Cuba. Revista Mexicana de Mastozoología, 9:84-111.

Koopman, K.F. 1958. A fossil vampire bat from Cuba. Breviora 90:1-4.

Suárez, W. 2005. Taxonomic Status of the Cuban Vampire Bat (Chiroptera: Phyllostomidae: Desmodontinae: Desmodus). Caribbean Journal of Science 41 (4):761-767.

Gonzalez, Alonso, et al. 2012. Libro Rojo de los Vertebrados de Cuba. Editorial Academia, La Habana. See "Mamiferos" pp:269-291 by mastozoologist Carlos Mancina.

Mancina, C. A., and L. Garcia. 2005. New genus and specis of fossil bat (Chiroptera:Phyllostomidae) from Cuba. Caribbean Journal of Science, 41: 22-27.

Mancina, C. A. 2011. Introduccion a los murcielagos pp: 123-133 en Borroto-Paez, R. y C. A. Mancina (eds) Mamiferos en Cuba. UPC print, Vaasa

Orihuela, J. 2011. Skull variation of the vampire bat Desmodus rotundus (Chiroptera: Phyllostomidae): Taxonomic implications for the Cuban fossil vampire bat Desmodus puntajudensis. Chiroptera Neotropical 17(1): 963-976.

Orihuela, J. 2012. Late Holocene fauna from a cave deposit in Western Cuba: post-Columbian occurrence of the vampire bat Desmodus rotundus (Phyllostomidae: Desmodontinae). Caribbean Journal of Science, 46 (2): 297-313.

Orihuela, J., and A. Tejedor. 2012. Peter's ghost-faced bat Mormoops megalophylla (Chiroptera: Mormoopidae) from a pre-Columbian archaeological deposit in Cuba. Acta Chiropterologica 14(1): 63-72.

Orihuela, J., R. Viera, and L. Vinola. 2017. New bat records based on modern and fossil remains from the province of Matanzas, Cuba.  

Silva Taboada, G. 1974. Fossil Chiroptera from cave deposits in Central Cuba, with a description of two new species, and the first record of Mormoops megalophylla. Acta Zoologica Cracoviensia, 19: 33-83.

Silva Taboada, G. 1983. Los Murcielagos de Cuba. Editorial Academia, La Habana.

Suarez, W. and S. Diaz-Franco. 2003. A new fossil bat (Chiroptera:Phyllostomidae) from a Quaternary cave deposit in Cuba. Caribbean Journal of Science, 39:371-377.

Tejedor, A. 2011. Systematics of the funnel-eared bats (Chiroptera: Natalidae). Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist. 353.