WESTERN PACIFIC – The Australian Museum has announced a scientific expedition to the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea’s Bougainville to undertake research into a pair of unique and rarely-sighted indigenous mammals.

The expedition will be the most extensive survey of the oceanic archipelago since the 1990s and offers a rare opportunity to gain valuable insights about mammalian evolution in an isolated ecosystem.

Professor Tim Flannery, who has just been appointed as “Trailblazer-in residence” at the Australian Museum, will work with indigenous biologists and local communities there.

The team will use a combination of DNA sampling, camera traps and traditional local knowledge to piece together information on the behaviour and distribution of the monkey-faced bat and giant rat.

The results will influence the design of long-term conservation efforts in the Solomon Islands and on Bougainville.

The Solomon Islands are a series of six major oceanic islands located in the Western Pacific Ocean. They are remarkable in that clusters of these islands have been largely isolated from major land masses throughout their geological history.

From an evolutionary biology standpoint, the Solomon Islands and the nearby outer islands of PNG are invaluable as each island has developed a unique biodiversity independent of the others.

Professor Flannery has the region as “the Galapagos of the Western Pacific”.

“The islands are around 40 million years old and the fauna on each island in the chain are different,“ Flannery said.

“They have never been connected by a land bridge, so they have both been colonised separately either by water or flown there. It’s like the Galapagos Islands. Take a blank slate and let the species come in and populate it.”

There are five known species of monkey-faced bat (genus Pteralopex) and at least one species of giant rat (Solomys ponceleti) that are endemic to the Solomon Islands, and the expedition leaders hope to discover more species of both.

They are also the largest mammals on the Solomon Islands. However, sightings have been few and far in between, with current knowledge limited to museum specimens and anecdotes.

There is an urgent need to gain a greater understanding of the mega-fauna, with one species of monkey-faced bat (Pteralopex flanneryi, named after Tim Flannery) and one species of giant rat (Solomys ponceleti) classified as “critically endangered” by The World Conservation Union.

Basic questions about their biology, habitat and reproduction still remain a mystery.

Flannery said that the expedition will answer those questions, which are crucial to starting conservation efforts.

“We need to start building from the ground up. To design an effective conservation method we’re in that crucial information gathering stage.”

What is known about the species of monkey-faced bats and giant rats found on the Solomons is that they have evolved characteristics unique to their species.

In the absence of any other land based mammal, they have occupied an ecological niches no other bats or rats have ventured into before.

With a wing span of over a metre and a half, the monkey-faced bats are “megabats”, and are one of the biggest bats in the world. Their common name originates from their primate-like appearance.

“They dwarf the fruit bats around Sydney. The biggest ones are very striking, enormous black bats with big boxy heads,” said Flannery.

The monkey-faced bats in the remote Solomon Islands have evolved characteristic usually associated with monkeys.

They have complex teeth and jaws so powerful it allows them able to crack green coconuts.

The molars have a unusually large number of cusps and heavy incisors to break through the hard husks of the coconut. In addition the bats have a “double canine” with two big cusps.

To Flannery’s knowledge, no other mammal has that kind of unique canine development.

The Solomons giant rat weighs up to two kilograms and has reproductive behaviour unseen in other rat species. The last recorded sighting in 2006 of a female and young showed that they had only one young at a time.

However Flannery explained that in the absence of any mammalian carnivores, the monkey-faced bat and giant rat did not evolve any defence mechanisms. This proved especially disastrous for the species when feral cats were introduced.

“They’re a naive species. We’ve had accounts of people taking monkey-faced bats out of tree holes and they won’t even attempt to bite you. They are just so unaware of predation.”

In addition to locating the monkey-faced bat and giant rat, the team will also be canvassing the Solomon Islands for other undiscovered native mammals. Samples will also be sent to the Australian Museum Research Institute for molecular analysis to describe species scientifically.

Local community involvement will also be an invaluable component.

“We are dealing with what are probably going to be fragmented specimens. There might be an old trophy skull hanging in a house for years or a jawbone. Fragmented DNA for analysis will be a big part of our work.”

Designing a conservation programme will be crucial to ensure long term preservation of the Solomon Island biodiversity.

Despite the challenges, the research programme could contribute much to mammalian conservation and research.

“The reality is that we are poised on the brink of a new era of discovery because there are so many species which have remained undetected. So there will be a new burst of activity where we will see many new species described and hopefully for the first time ever effective conservation,” said Flannery.

The scientists are also heading to nearby Papua New Guinea’s island of Bougainville to look for and study species of the rare mammals there.

The Bougainville version of the giant rat has not been seen by scientists since 1937 and another species on the Solomons island of Malaita has never been recorded.

The expedition’s innovative partnership with indigenous biologists and communities is already paying dividends.

Bougainvillean scientists say they are excited to have been put in charge of the expedition by Professor Flannery, in what has been seen as an initiative to establish local biologists as leaders in conservation.

A skin of the Bougainville giant rat has been found by Dr Jeff Noro, who will be in charge of the Bougainville leg of the expedition.

Dr Noro, a molecular scientist who did his PhD at the University of New South Wales, is director of The Kainake Project – a community cultural and conservation organisation based in his home village, which is in prime giant rat habitat in virgin rainforest on Bougainville.

Junior Novera, a Bougainvillean who is about to start a PhD in zoology at the University of Queensland, will be the on site science manager on Bougainville.

After years of being part of gruelling field trips in other parts of Papua New Guinea, Novera was delighted to be working at home where the civil war of the 1990s had kept loggers away and habitats relatively intact.

“This project gives us this huge opportunity to go and rediscover, and hopefully discover species are still out there and unknown to science,” he said.

Australian Museum chief executive Kim McKay sees the results being produced by the PNG and Solomon Island cultural and scientific partners as vindication of the decision to put indigenous people at the heart of the project.

“We are actually learning from the local community and working with them, and that’s the point of them being here at the museum this week – to share that experience,” she said.

As one of the world’s leading experts on mammals of Melanesia, Professor Flannery’s decision to put the local scientists in charge is not being taken lightly.

“For him to actually trust us, to say, ‘you guys go and take the lead’, I think that is huge for me,” said Dr Noro.

“I think he is really trying to build us as leaders in conservation.” - PNC