The New World leaf-nosed bats (Phyllostomidae) are found from southern North America to South America, specifically from the Southwest United States to northern Argentina. They are ecologically the most varied and diverse family within the order Chiroptera. Most species are insectivorous, but the phyllostomid bats include within their number true predatory species and frugivores. For example, the spectral bat, the largest bat in the Americas, eats vertebrate prey, including small, dove-sized birds. Members of this family have evolved to use food groups such as fruit, nectar, pollen, insects, frogs, other bats, and small vertebrates, and in the case of the vampire bats, even blood.
The Antillean fruit-eating bat is one of two leaf-nosed bat species belonging to the genus Brachyphylla. The species occurs in the Caribbean from Puerto Rico to St. Vincent and Barbados. Fossil specimens have also been recorded from New Providence, Bahamas.
The Cuban fruit-eating bat is a species of bat in the family Phyllostomidae found in the Cayman Islands, Cuba, and Hispaniola .It has been extirpated from the Bahamas and Jamaica.
Thomas's fruit-eating bat, sometimes also popularly called Watson's fruit-eating bat, is a species of bat in the family Phyllostomidae. It is found from southern Mexico, through Central America to Colombia. Its South American range is to the west of the Andes. The species name is in honor of H. J. Watson, a plantation owner in western Panama who used to send specimens to the British Natural History Museum, where Oldfield Thomas would often describe them.
