Researchers Give New Insight on 'Flying Fox'- World's Least Studied Bat Species

A team of biologists has fresh new evidence on the Mortlock Islands Flying Fox - the world's least studied bat. Their population faces a serious threat from rising ocean waters due to climate change. 

Native to a few remote and small Pacific islands, the Mortlock Islands flying fox  is a large breadfruit eating bat. For more than 140 years the only evidence the scientists had about the existence of the beautiful flying fox was the lone specimen that was preserved at the Natural History Museum in London in a jar of alcohol.

But in a new paper the team of bat biologists led by Don Buden of the College of Micronesia sheds light on these bats that stay in the low lying atolls.

The paper that is co-authored by Kristofer Helgen of the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History claims that the habitat of these bats is affected by the rising ocean waters due to climatic changes.

"Very little is known about many of the mammals that live on remote Pacific islands, including this beautiful flying fox," study co-author Kristofer Helgen, of the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History, said in a statement. "This study gives us our first close look at a remarkable bat."

The lone specimen preserved in the jar in London was initially captured in 1870 from the Mortlock Islands, a series of atolls that are a part of the Federated States of Micronesia in West-Central Pacific Ocean. This specimen was further studied by a British biologist, Oldfield Thomas, who named the species Pteropus phaeocephalus in 1882. But it was later found that the specimen was named 50 years earlier by a German naturalist voyaging on a Russian expedition.

"We found a report written by F.H. Kittlitz in 1836 describing his expedition to the Pacific Islands in the late 1820s. In that report he describes the flying-foxes of the Mortlocks and names them Pteropus pelagicus," Buden said. "This means the species was named long before Thomas's description in 1882."

Since the international rules clearly state that the earliest proposed scientific name for a species must be adopted officially, Buden then renamed the Motlock Islands flying fox as Pteropus pelagicus.

In this study, the researchers studied the skulls and skins of the flying fox specimens from 8 different museums in 3 different continents. The second mystery the researchers solved is that the flying fox from the nearby islands of Chuuk Lagoon, which was considered as a separate species,  Pteropus insularis,  was in fact a subspecies of the Pteropus Pelagicus.

This second new evidence clearly indicates that the Mortlock flying fox has a larger geographic distribution than previously thought.

The latest fieldwork reveals that the Mortlock Island is home to a small population of nearly 900-1,200 bats that are spread across a 4.6 square miles. These species were initially hunted and exported for food but strict legal laws have resulted in better protection for these species.

But researchers are uncertain about the future of these specimens. And also point out that the rising sea levels generated by the climate change pose a serious threat to the flying foxes habitat and simultaneously the food resources through flooding, erosion, and contamination of freshwater supplies.

Helgen concluded saying, "When we think of climate change having an impact on a mammal species, what comes to mind most immediately is an Arctic animal like the polar bear, which depends on sea ice to survive. But this flying fox may be the best example of a mammal species likely to be negatively impacted by warming global climates. Here is a tropical mammal that has survived and evolved for hundreds of millennia on little atolls near the equator. How much longer will it survive as sea levels continue to rise?"