Source: Radio New Zealand
An artist’s impression of a short-tailed New Zealand bat, similar to the new Mystacina nymphe species newly discovered in Otago. Gavin Mouldey / supplied
A palaeontologist studying fossil fragments in Central Otago has identified a previously unknown, but now extinct, bat.
University of New South Wales professor Suzanne Hand has been studying fossil fragments found in Central Otago that are 16 to 19 million years old.
She says the bat has been named Mystacina nymphe, ‘nymphe’ after the Greek word for a forest spirit.
The new nymphe species are related to the modern short-tailed bat, but much smaller, weighing between eight and 10 grams.
New Zealand currently has two living species of pekapeka or bat, including one short-tailed bat (another short-tailed species was last seen in 1967, the Department of Conservation (DOC) says, and thought to be extinct). But working at the St Bathans site in Otago, Hand has found Aotearoa once had at least five different species of short-tailed bat.
“So this was a time when it was much warmer in New Zealand than it is now, probably like a sub-tropical to warm temperate kind of climate … The forests were probably even more diverse … and what we’re finding is that a lot of different animals lived at the time, and one of them was this tiny little bat that we found.”
An interesting collection of reptiles also once lived in New Zealand too, she said.
“Alongside this amazing diversity of bats were also things like crocodiles, and turtles, and swiftlets, and all sorts of animals that are not found in New Zealand today once lived there.
“And it looks like that as the climate changed and things got cooler, and the forest changed and so on, a lot of those animals disappeared.”
The area near where the new short-tailed bat fossil was found, at St Bathans, Otago. Alan Tennyson/Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa
Short-tailed bats are now found only in New Zealand, but they were once found in Australia too, before becoming extinct there. They filled an important role as pollinators for some plants.
“They’re also known as walking bats or burrowing bats, because they spend quite a lot of time on the ground foraging, not like normal bats … and they’re very distantly related to vampire bats in South America,” Hand says.
“The New Zealand bats are really, really special. Very precious, and very very important in terms of their ecological roles today. And in the past there was a greater diversity of them, so they ranged from these very small ones, eight to 10 grams – so that’s a little bat – up to about 40 grams, which is actually a very large bat.”
Hand says the extinction of her newly found nymphe species was linked to historical cooling of the climate.
Bats were very sensitive to environmental changes, Hand said, and could be an early indicator of environmental stress. New Zealand’s remaining species were under significant pressure.
“Bats are changing, they’re changing their habits, they’re changing their distributions, and so on. At the moment it hasn’t been great, because bats are not evolving fast enough to keep up with … these really fast changes human-induced climate change is bringing.”
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
