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