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Leiopelma frogs
Land snails
Tuatara |
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Photo Credit above
Third from top: Takahe
Fifth from top: Kokako
Sixth from top:
Tusked weta
Seventh from top:
Archey's frog
Crown Copyright, DoC
Eighth from top: Kauri, Alexander Turnbull Library
Illustration Credit
Second from top:
John Gerrard Keulemans
1842-1912, Huia (male
and female) Heteralocha
acutirostris 1888
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand must be obtained
before any re-use of these images. |
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The greater short-tailed bat Mystacina robusta, and its close relative,
the lesser short-tailed bat M. tuberculata, were the world's only survivors
of an ancient lineage in the family Mystacinidae. The family is endemic
to New Zealand.
M. robusta, well renowned as weird and primitive, has been presumed extinct
since there has been no confirmed sighting since 1967.
The greater short-tailed bat was previously described as a subspecies of the smaller, more
predominent M. tuberculata, as recently as 1962 (Dwyer 1962). Historical
and fossil records from various mainland locations show the previous wide distribution of a
larger species.
Much later after rats infested its only habitat on Big South Cape and Soloman
Islands, and the last sighting in 1967, extinct M. robusta was accepted as a full
species (Hill & Daniel 1985). |
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 The only known image of a greater
short-tailed bat at Puoi Cove, Big South Cape Island in 1965. It became extinct
soon after.
Don Merton, Crown Copyright © Dept of Conservation
 View larger |
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Sub-fossil remains show that the greater short-tailed bat was once found throughout the
North and South Islands. Since Maori settlement in the thirteenth century, the only live
specimens came from rat-free Big South Cape Island, and Solomons Island which are off the
South West Cape of Stewart Island.
Short-tailed bats are very unusual creatures. In the prehuman New Zealand ecology,
they did the job of small rodents in a normal mammalian ecology. The greater short-tailed
bat developed habits that are similar in many ways to New Zealand's flightless and poor flying
birds. |
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Little is known about the habits of
the greater short-tailed bat, since it is known only from Big South Cape and Solomans Islands.
More is known about its close relative, the lesser
short-tailed bat Mystacina tuberculata (left) because it is more widely distributed.
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New Zealand's bats have suffered large declines since human settlement from forest
destruction. Selective logging is just as damaging as clear-cutting because bats
establish seasonal roosts over long periods of time, probably for hundreds of years in
some cases, in mature big trees. Beech trees are particularly favored roosts, but
kauri, totara, rimu, rata and kamahi are used.
Worthy and Holdaway in "The Lost World of the Moa: Prehistoric Life of New Zealand"
suggest that the greater short-tailed bat was prominant in northern New Zealand.
Mystacina are not true homeotherms and their body temperature drops when roosting.
With the larger body size of the greater short-tailed bat, it takes more energy to get active
again, so the warmer climate of the north was more suitable for it. |
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"... short-tailed bats are the world's most terrestrial bats and
represent the bat family's attempt to produce a mouse ..."
Jared Diamond |
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Mystacina are the only bats that scramble over the ground as well as they fly, however,
they are relatively slow fliers, and seldom get higher than three metres above the ground.
When on the ground the wings are neatly tucked away under a membrane, which allows the use of
arms as front legs, to run through burrows and forage on the forest floor as eagerly as a mouse.
The greater short-tailed bat is New Zealand's largest bat, but relatively small by
world bat standards, 90mm in length with a wing span of 300mm.
M. robusta is primarily an insectivore, but it is thought to have preyed upon
muttonbird chicks in the nest, and has been seen eating the meat of birds that were hanging
out to dry. It has been found roosting in petrel burrows.
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Greater short-tailed bat Mystacina robusta
Image by permission of Peter Schouten
 View larger image.
Related articles:
Mammals
Short-tailed bat
Long-tailed bat
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New Zealand's worst ecological disaster in modern times .....
A historic environmental event occurred in 1964 on Big South Cape Island, and the tiny
adjoining Soloman and Pukaweka Islands, off South West Cape of Stewart Island. This
changed forever the way islands and their native plants and animals are perceived, protected
and managed in New Zealand.
The islands were the final refuge for a number of native animals
formerly abundant and widespread on the mainland and Stewart Island, but which had become
extinct on all but Big South Cape, Solomon and Pukaweka. No mammal had
been introduced and a full quota of indigenous wildlife was still in place.
In the early 1960s habitat destruction and fragmentation was well advanced on the mainland,
however, there were still hundreds of thousands of hectares of apparent intact native forest.
Despite the large area that seemed intact, massive retractions in range and extinctions
had occurred. The mainland forests had largely gone silent. But islands such as
Big South Cape had not.
Leading biologists firmly believed that ecological collapse was not the result of predation,
because predators were natural. As in Europe and North America, the conclusion was that
extinction in New Zealand was primarily caused by the destruction, fragmentation and degradation
of habitat. This theory was soon to be proved wrong.
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Extinction of the greater short-tailed bat was a great loss
to New Zealand's natural heritage, since Mystacina is the most basal group in the
Noctilionoidea, a lineage going back 60 million years. The loss is also significant
because New Zealand's three bats were the only indigenous terrestrial mammals. |
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In 1964 a rat plague on Big South Cape was reported, after ships rats got
ashore from a fishing vessel. The rats immediately inflicted immense damage to the last
remaining refuge of such rare species as the South Island saddleback, Stead's bush wren,
Stewart Island snipe, and greater short-tailed bat.
Some knowledgeable and respected biologists at the time genuinely believed the rats were
not a threat to wildlife, and vigorously opposed the suggestion to intervene. They
maintained that intervention would change the ecology in a way that cannot be predicted,
and should only be done after research has shown there is a problem.
Nevertheless the Department of Conservation eventually succeeded
in getting permission to mount a rescue mission, but by the time Big South Cape was reached,
five months after the first reports, many land-bird populations had already been destroyed.
The saddleback was saved by transferring the remnants to two small neighbouring pest-free
islands, but it was too late to save the bush wren, snipe and bat - all of which were quickly
exterminated along with an unknown number of invertebrate taxa. It was New Zealand's
worst ecological disaster in modern times, that was quietly forgotten. |
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