漂流者 16

Carrying undigested fruit seeds from New Guinea in their stomachs,

they inadvertently helped sow the Solomons' rainforests

By day, these nocturnal fruit bats roost communally in the safety of the tallest trees

From the few bats that made it here, there are now 18 different species

They have become the most widespread native mammal in the South Pacific

East of the Solomons, the distance between islands increases dramatically

It's now 1,000 miles of open ocean before the next island groups -Fiji, Samoa and Tonga

Of all these island clusters, Fiji is the largest

Made up of over 300 volcanic islands, formed some 40 million years ago,

Fiji is around 2/3 the size of the Solomons,

so remained a reasonable target for would-be colonisers

Despite its isolation,

it is still home to nearly half the number of plant species found in the Solomons

But animal colonisers were not so successful