Pteralopex pulchra (Montane Monkey-faced Bat)

[sebbe67]

Pteralopex pulchra

This species was first discovered in 1991 but it is al ready thought to be extremly rare

only a single female collected at a elevation of 1230m on the southern slopes of Mt Makarakomburu it was caught it mistnet set up in mossy montane forest

Since 1991 no other specimens has been reported and the species are thought to be very rare

The only known picture of the species can be found in the book

Mammals of the South-west Pacific and Moluccan Islands

[sebbe67]

A e-mail I got from a guy in Australia a few days ago, he has some questions about this species.

"Aim full aware of the fact that this species was discovered just a "few" years ago, and it is surely to soon to list it as extinct, but I cant help wonder how the species are doing, it was described as being extremely rare already when it was first discovered in 1990, it just known from one locality (as far as I know), known from a single specimen and known from a mountain massive of which few pure moss forest (preffered habitat) remains today (at least according to sources on the net)."

"And as far I know there havent been any more records in the past 16 years, has there even been any searches after it since the discovery? is there any possibilites that it exist in any closeby? if so where?"




Here is the bat the guy is speaking about, I have scanned it from Flannerys book,


So anyone which could answer some of his question, I have been able to answer some of them myself, but if someone would like to add som fact or info it would be good.

[another specialist]

Profile
The head and body length of the genus Pteralopex is 255 - 280 mm (10 - 11"). The other species in the genus are generally restricted to primary forest, and this species may be similar. The montane monkey-faced bat is found above the altitude of 800 m (2600'). It probably has a diet similar to the other species of the genus, mainly based on nuts.

The montane monkey-faced bat is known only from Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands.

*** Very little information has been published about this species.

*** The montane monkey-faced bat is known from only from 1 specimen (Nowak 1999).

*** On Guadalcanal, the species Pteralopex atrata seems to be replaced by Pteralopex pulchra above the height of 800 m (2600'). This is the only record of altitudinal zonation in Solomon mammals (Bowen-Jones et al. 1997).

IUCN Status:
1994: Endangered
1996 - 2004: Critically Endangered (Criteria: A1c) (Population Trend: Decreasing) (IUCN 2004)
Countries Where the Montane Monkey-faced Bat Is Currently Found:
2004: Occurs in the Solomon Islands (IUCN 2004).

History of Distribution:
The montane monkey-faced bat is known only from Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands.

Size:
The head and body length of the genus Pteralopex is 255 - 280 mm (10 - 11").

Habitat:
The montane monkey-faced bat is found above the altitude of 800 m (2600'). The other species in the genus are generally restricted to primary forest, and this species may be similar.

The montane monkey-faced bat lives in the East Melanesian Islands Biodiversity Hotspot (Cons. Intl. 2005).

Diet:
This species of the genus Pteralopex probably has a diet similar to the other species of the genus, mainly based on nuts.

www.animalinfo.org/species/bat/pterpulc.htm

[another specialist]

The most remarkable of the bats are the flying foxes (Pteropodidae), which play an important role in pollination and seed dispersal. Of more than a dozen threatened species of pteropodid bats in the hotspot, three are highly threatened (though poorly known). The Bougainville monkey-faced bat (Pteralopex anceps, CR) was known mainly from specimens collected in the 1920s, until six bats were observed during a 1995 survey (and apparently no sign of this bat was found during fieldwork on Choiseul in 1992 or on Buka in 1997); the montane monkey-faced bat (P. pulchra, CR) is known from only a single specimen collected on Mt. Makarakomburu on Guadalcanal; and the Guadalcanal monkey-faced bat (P. atrata, CR) was last recorded in 1991.

www.biodiversityhotspots.org/xp/Hotspots/east_melanesia/biodiversity.xml

[another specialist]

A new species of Monkey-faced Bat from the Solomon Islands (Parnaby 2002b)
Monkey-faced Bats (genus Pteralopex) are a distinctive and poorly studied group of flying-foxes known only from the Solomon Islands and Fiji. All have very restricted and declining distributions and most are listed as Critically Endangered by the IUCN. Prior to the Australian Museum survey of the South-west Pacific during the late 1980s and early 1990s only three species of Pteralopex were known in the scientific literature. In 1991 Dr Tim Flannery, then research scientist in the Mammal section, described a fourth species P. pulchra based on a single, but very distinctive bat, caught in May 1990 in montane forest on Guadalanal, Solomon Islands. The following month two other members of the team working on New Georgia Island collected another previously undescribed species of Pteralopex from an old village site surrounded by primary lowland forest.

In a recent review of the genus, Dr Harry Parnaby formally described the New Georgia Monkey-faced Bat, Pteralopex taki based on a series of specimens lodged in the Australian Museum collection (Parnaby 2002b). He found P. taki to be most similar morphologically to P. pulchra although it has shorter, dull brown rather than black fur and has a number of dental and cranial features which distinguish it from other members of the genus. The close relationship between P. pulchra and P. taki is also supported by biochemical studies carried out using tissue samples collected from each species.

Ecological studies during the 1990s found that P. taki depends on lowland primary forest with large old trees, for survival (Fisher and Tasker 1997). According to local people this species once occurred on Kolombangara Island but went extinct there as a result of intensive logging between 1966 - 1980. It seems likely that P. taki will become extinct in the near future unless suitable primary lowland forest is protected from logging and clearing for agriculture. Accordingly, an IUCN listing of Critically Endangered is proposed for P. taki by Parnaby (2002).

References
Parnaby, H. E. (2002). A taxonomic review of the genus Pteralopex (Chiroptera: Pteropodidae), the Monkey-faced Bats of the South-western Pacific. Australian Mammalogy. 23. 145-162.
Fisher, D. and Tasker, E. (1997). Natural history of the New Georgia Monkey-faced Bat Pteralopex sp. Nov. from the Solomon Islands. Pacific Conservation Biology 3. 134-142.

www.amonline.net.au/mammals/news/index.htm

[surroundx]

Justification:
Listed as Critically Endangered (Possibly Extinct) because its population size is estimated to number fewer than 250 mature individuals, with all individuals in a single subpopulation, and it is likely experiencing a continuing decline. This species has not been recorded since it was first discovered and surveys are needed to confirm its continued existence. Other members of the genus are highly susceptible to deforestation and hunting, and either of these threats could also be operating on this species.

Source: www.iucnredlist.org/details/18658/0

[surroundx]

Original description:

Flannery, Timothy F. (1991). A New Species of Pteralopex (Chiroptera: Pteropodidae) from Montane Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands. Records of the Australian Museum 43(2): 123-129.

[Melanie]

Listed as possibly extinct in the IUCN red list. So moved back to extinct.

[Sebbe]

This species is known only from the holotype. Extensive surveys at 1,000 m and 1,300-1,500 m asl on the northern side of Mt Popomanasaeu in 2015 failed to record the species. The habitat present at the 1,300-1,500 m survey site resembled the description given by Flannery (1991); however, the species was not detected. It is possible the lower altitudinal limit of this species is greater that 1,500 m on northern Guadalcanal. The rain shadow may restrict montane vegetation that is suitable for P. pulchra to higher altitudes on the northern side of the island.

www.iucnredlist.org/details/18658/0

[Sebbe]

Evidence for modern extinction in plants and animals.

We summarise evidence of extinction reported in Red List accounts of plants (170 species) and animals (816 species) listed as extinct (EX) or extinct in the wild (EW) under different versions of the Red List. We find that types of evidence and their frequency of use are remarkably consistent across plants, animals and Red List versions. The most common evidence is ‘long time missing, fewer than half of species accounts discuss search effort, and accounts of 15 % of EX/EW plants and 27 % of animals provide no reason for the EX/EW listing. We review use of extinction probability models for EX, EW and Critically Endangered species flagged as possibly extinct, and find that 155 species have been subjects of extinction probability models. Nearly all models applied to birds and mammals agree that the species are extinct. Seventeen statistical models for estimating the probability that a species is extinct based on search effort, traits and detection rate have been published since 1993 and applied to EX, EW, or CR(PE) species. A tiny fraction (0.6 %) of Red List accounts currently include published model results; thus extinction probability modelling has been largely independent of Red Listing. This is likely to change, because since 2019, Red List guidelines provide templates for quantitative estimates of extinction likelihood. Combining statistical models with assessments of species' probability of extinction based on other criteria can strengthen extinction listings of plants and animals, and add to our understanding of the scale of modern species loss.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320724003343

[Sebbe]

Extinct or still out there? Disentangling influences on extinction and rediscovery helps to clarify the fate of species on the edge.

Each year, two or three species that had been considered to be extinct are rediscovered. Uncertainty about whether or not a species is extinct is common, because rare and highly threatened species are difficult to detect. Biological traits such as body size and range size are expected to be associated with extinction. However, these traits, together with the intensity of search effort, might influence the probability of detection and extinction differently. This makes statistical analysis of extinction and rediscovery challenging. Here we use a variant of survival analysis known as cure rate modelling to differentiate factors that influence rediscovery from those that influence extinction. We analyse a global dataset of 99 mammals that have been categorised as extinct or possibly extinct. We estimate the probability that each of these mammals is still extant, and thus estimate the proportion of missing (presumed extinct) mammals that are incorrectly assigned extinction. We find that body mass and population density are predictors of extinction, and body mass and search effort predict rediscovery. In mammals, extinction rate increases with body mass and population density, and these traits act synergistically to greatly elevate extinction rate in large species that also occurred in formerly dense populations. However, when they remain extant, larger-bodied missing species are rediscovered sooner than smaller species. Greater search effort increases the probability of rediscovery in larger species of missing mammals, but has a minimal effect on small species, which take longer to be rediscovered, if extant. By separating the effects of species characteristics on extinction and detection, and using models with the assumption that a proportion of missing species will never be rediscovered, our new approach provides estimates of extinction probability in species with few observation records and scant ecological information.

www.researchgate.net/publication/305201346_Extinct_or_still_out_there_Disentangling_influences_on_extinction_and_rediscovery_helps_to_clarify_the_fate_of_species_on_the_edge

[Sebbe]

Type Specimens of Non-fossil Mammals in the Australian Museum, Sydney.

media.australian.museum/media/Uploads/Journals/37966/1653_complete.pdf