Negros Naked-backed Fruit Bat

Open encyclopedia reference

The Philippine naked-backed fruit bat or Philippine bare-backed fruit bat (Dobsonia chapmani) is a megabat that mostly lives on Negros Island. Two small populations were also found on Cebu Island in the Philippines. Like other bare-backed fruit bats, its wings meet along the midline of their bodies, making it a very agile flier. It roosted in caves, in areas where little light penetrated the gloom. It was so abundant once that it left piles of guano, which were used by miners as fertilizer. By the mid-1980s, the lowland forest was replaced by sugar cane plantations and the bat vanished. In 1996 the species was declared extinct by the IUCN, as none had been sighted since 1964, but the bat was rediscovered in 2000. The species now survives in very small numbers. The bat lives in caves and comes out at night to eat fruits from local rainforests. After the forests were cut down to make way for sugar plantations the bat population dropped drastically, and the few remaining ones are still hunted for their meat.

Wikipedia contributors, Philippine naked-backed fruit bat; see linked history · CC BY-SA 4.0 . Plain-text lead excerpt, at most 180 words; no infobox or later sections Retrieved 2026-10-05T12:53:40.245433+00:00. This reference remains separate from the taxonomic record.

Identity & source status

Scientific name

Dobsonia chapmani Rabor, 1952

Name authority

Rabor, 1952

Common name

Negros Naked-backed Fruit Bat

Rank

species

Accepted status

accepted

Kingdom

Animalia

Phylum

Chordata

Class

Mammalia

Order

Chiroptera

Family

Pteropodidae

Genus

Dobsonia

Extinction status

Recorded extant

Classification family tree

Nested taxonomic groups from the source. This is not a direct-ancestor chain, a dated evolutionary tree or a phylogenetic reconstruction.

1. domainEukaryota (Chatton, 1925) Whittaker & Margulis, 1978
2. kingdomAnimalia
3. phylumChordata
4. subphylumVertebrata
5. infraphylumGnathostomata
6. parvphylumOsteichthyes
7. megaclassTetrapoda
8. classMammalia Linnaeus, 1758
9. subclassTheria Parker & Haswell, 1897
10. infraclassEutheria Gill, 1872
11. orderChiroptera Blumenbach, 1779
12. suborderYinpterochiroptera Springer, Teeling, Madsen, Stanhope & Jong, 2001
13. familyPteropodidae Gray, 1821
14. subfamilyHarpyionyterinae Miller, 1907
15. tribeDobsoniini Andersen, 1912
16. genusDobsonia Palmer, 1898
17. speciesDobsonia chapmani Rabor, 1952

Close classified relatives

These entries share the source’s genus, Dobsonia. They are not necessarily the closest relatives established by molecular evidence.

Browse 158 records assigned to Pteropodidae.

Documented distribution

Source distribution statements, not a complete range map. A listed locality is not necessarily a place of origin.

Source literature & publication evidence

References attached to this source record, including nomenclatural citations where supplied. This is a selected bibliography; abbreviated citations remain in the source’s form.

1. https://www.itis.gov/servlet/SingleRpt/SingleRpt?search_topic=TSN&search_value=631558 Source fields: Taxon.tsv dwc:namePublishedIn, Taxon.tsv dcterms:references

Origins, evidence & remaining research

Name authority and publication references document nomenclature where the source supplies it. They do not establish evolutionary origins or the earliest fossil occurrence.

Specimen-level evidence, morphology, ecological research, phylogenetic studies, a comprehensive bibliography and a located literary passage have not yet been compiled for this record. A suitable sourced image remains to be added.

Dataset citation & attribution

This exact taxon in ChecklistBank · Catalogue of Life 2026-09-11

Catalogue of Life 2026-09-11; dataset 316321; doi:10.48580/dgz5n. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ . Retrieved 5 October 2026.

Stable key: col:372KF. Classification follows source parent identifiers. English common names may vary by region.