A bat found only in Ecuador's Chocó forest turns out to be a species entirely of its own

Ecuador's Chocó is one of the most life-packed, and most threatened, forests on Earth. A bat long lumped in with a wider-ranging relative has now been confirmed, in The Journal of Mammalogy, as a distinct species found only there — the Chocó broad-nosed bat. Naming is not paperwork for its own sake: a species that exists nowhere else becomes visible to conservation law, funding and protection in a way an anonymous population never can. The Chocó just gained a flagship the size of a hand.

SDG 15 · Life on land