Lonchophylla dekeyseri is endemic to the Cerrado (contra Leal et al. 2013), and has been collected in the Brazilian states of Goiás, Mato Grosso do Sul, Minas Gerais, and in the Distrito Federal (Taddei et al. 1983, Coelho and Marinho-Filho 2002, Aguiar et al. 2014, Moratelli and Dias 2015, Almeida et al. 2016). Additional specimens assigned to Lonchophylla dekeyseri exist for the Bolivian state of Santa Cruz (in the Cerrado), and for the Brazilian states of Piauí (in the Cerrado-Caatinga ecotone) and Paraíba (in the Caatinga) (Woodman and Timm 2006, Leal et al. 2013). However, the taxonomic identifications of these specimens need to be reevaluated based on the morphological criteria recently proposed by Moratelli and Dias (2015), who noted the following: “We are not convinced that Lonchophylla dekeyseri occurs in the Bolivian savannah and in the Cerrado–Caatinga ecotone in NE Brazil. One of the specimens supporting these records was examined a long time ago (DZSJRP 11459), and the other two (USNM 584472, 584473) are distinct from other samples of Lonchophylla dekeyseri as determined in a previous discriminant function analysis. These specimens are not included in this analysis because we were not able to compare them with samples from other localities.” We provisionally regard Lonchophylla dekeyseri as endemic to the Brazilian Cerrado until further studies determine the taxonomic identity of specimens collected in Bolivia, the Cerrado-Caatinga ecotone, and the Caatinga.

The red list of the IUCN ver. 3.1 assigned the category “Endangered” to Lonchophylla dekeyseri (see Aguiar and Bernard 2016). The species appears in the official list of threatened species of Brazil with the category “Endangered” (ICMBIO-MMA 2016).