[00:00.200]Carrying undigested fruit seeds from New Guinea in their stomachs,
[00:04.700]they inadvertently helped sow the Solomons' rainforests
[00:08.400]By day, these nocturnal fruit bats roost communally in the safety of the tallest trees
[00:14.930]From the few bats that made it here, there are now 18 different species
[00:20.120]They have become the most widespread native mammal in the South Pacific
[00:25.500]East of the Solomons, the distance between islands increases dramatically
[00:31.410]It's now 1,000 miles of open ocean before the next island groups -Fiji, Samoa and Tonga
[00:40.980]Of all these island clusters, Fiji is the largest
[00:47.000]Made up of over 300 volcanic islands, formed some 40 million years ago,
[00:52.490]Fiji is around 2/3 the size of the Solomons,
[00:56.360]so remained a reasonable target for would-be colonisers
[00:59.750]Despite its isolation,
[01:02.020]it is still home to nearly half the number of plant species found in the Solomons
[01:06.860]But animal colonisers were not so successful