The species pooled from IUCN Red List version 2020.1. Species taxonomy was then curated and updated (e.g., synonyms or merged species) using the nomenclature from Simmons and Cirranello10. The “checklist for global cave-dwelling bats” derived from the IUCN Red List includes 679 species. Meanwhile, the DarkCideS 1.0 dataset contains occurrence data for 402 species from 16 families representing 59% of all cave-dwelling species 17. We found a marginally significant relationship between the species richness and proportion of threatened species between the IUCN-based global cave-dwelling bat and DarkCideS datasets (Kendall’s t B = 0.60, P = 0.07). The highest completeness of sampled species is in the Neotropics (67.38%) and Indomalayan region (66.08%), and the greatest gaps are in Austral-Oceania (40.28%). Highest endemism was recorded in Austral-Oceania (58.62%) (c2 = 227.32, df = 5, P < 0.001). The proportion of threatened species is highest in the Indomalayan region (16%) realm (c2 = 281.18, df = 5, P < 0.01) (Figure 2a). Most bat families have a coverage of 30 to 60% of species, but four families had all cave-dwelling species in the DarkCideS database, and three smaller families had no species included (Figure 2b).