Endangered
Vanikoro flying fox
Pteropus tuberculatus
Vanikoro flying fox is a bat in the family Pteropodidae (order Chiroptera) — Pteropus tuberculatus, recorded as Endangered.
Appearance
Coloration includes a dark brown pelage with dark brown-black skin.
The Vanikoro flying fox is a small flying fox that has an average body length was indicated by surveyors as about half the size of a Pacific flying fox, with large heads and small ears.
Range and habitat
It has only been found in the Vanikoro island group located in the southern Solomon Islands. The species as a whole was originally known from just a few specimens collected sometime before 1930 but following surveys conducted on the island in the early 1990s did not detect this species again causing the Vanikoro flying fox to be listed as extinct.
The main island of Vanikoro was extensively logged without any reforestation plan in the 1920s through 1960s that resulted in major habitat degradation.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet
The Vanikoro flying fox is mostly a solitary animal that can be found roosting individually or occasionally in pairs in the middle understory of trees with significant overhead cover and close to a food source. Observations of their diet suggest that the Vanikoro flying fox may be an important pollinator of coconuts and several other flowering plants in the area.
In crisis
Even so, the species was rediscovered by a survey conducted in late 2014 that indicated a population in the high hundreds or low thousands and reported all observations. Opportunistic hunting in some areas can also contribute as a threat to the species.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix II. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Vanikoro flying fox is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Vanikoro flying fox, Wikidata item Q558431. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
